The knowledge of God and its historical development

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THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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Edinburgh : T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street.

THE

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

AND ITS HISTORICAL
DEVELOPMENT

BY

HENRY MELVILL GWATKIN, M.A.

DIXIE PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
AND FELLOW OF EMMANUEL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
U.D. AND LATE GIFFORD LECTURER, EDINBURGH

(IN TWO VOLUMES)
Volume I

Edinburgh : T. & T, CLARK, 38 George Street

1906

Printed by
Morrison & Gibb Limited

FOR

T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH

LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED
NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER's SONS

TO THE MEMORY

OF

MANDELL CREIGHTON

THE FRIEND OF UNFORGOTTEN YEARS

PREFACE

These volumes represent the Gifford Lectures delivered
at Edinburgh in 1904 and 1905. With some hesitation
I have decided to retain the lecture form in which they
were given. But they have been rearranged with more
regard to unity of subject and less to uniformity of
length, and considerable additions have been made.
Thus the first series of ten lectures condenses into
nine, while the second, also of ten, is expanded into
seventeen.

The plan of the work and the point of view taken are
set forth in the first Lecture, so that I need add nothing
here. As regards the many omissions that will be
found in it, there are two things to be said. Though
I have found the restrictions of a Giflbrd Lecturer
distinctly helpful in the examination of some religious
beliefs, they have obliged me to leave others undiscussed.
If I have drawn the line too narrowly, it was better to
do this than to overpass my limits. Besides this, the
entire work is no more than an outline of a great
subject. All that could be done within reasonable
compass was to state the main positions and trace the
main course of the development ; and this is all that I
have attempted to do.

viii PREFACE

Among books which have appeared since the relevant
parts of this work were in type, a high place must be
given to Mr. Storr's Development and Divme Pttrpose ; but
perhaps Dr. Ferries' Growth of Christian Faith (just
published) will prove the most important. So suggestive
a book needs more than one reading ; but I think we
need his teaching that the knowledge of God in the
man of our time must commonly be a quiet evolution
of an initial love of right and truth ; and that a good
deal of moral training (more than we commonly sup-
pose) is needed before we can gain help from some
facts of religion.

For other reasons, Dr. M'Taggart's Some Dogmas of
Religion cannot be left unnoticed. Much that he says
is excellent, and many things are admirably stated.
But generally, the land he shows us is a very dream-
land of

"Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimseras dire."

He reduces everything to metaphysics, rejecting " ethical
arguments " as worthless, and seems to think one theory
as good as another, if there is no metaphysical demon-
stration of its untruth. He argues freely from physical
evil to moral evil ; as if there w^ere no serious difference
between results of the system which are unpleasant to
ourselves and the disturbance of it by wrong action.
Were this distinction admitted, the inference of design
would be much stronger than Dr. M'Taggart allows ;
and he coald not safely argue that a God who permits
" the smallest pang of toothache " may be telling us lies
wholesale, perhaps because it is the best thing he can
do for us. Other questions we must pass by ; but to his

PREFACE ix

" ultimate " theory that the universe may be a harmonious
system of persons with a tendency to improvement, I
have no objection ; only two comments. 1. Any theory is
impregnable if it can be presented as ultimate, namely,
— as one we have no faculties to discuss further. But
while the action of a single will is confessedly such a
theory, the harmonious action of many wills (including
our own) seems eminently a subject for further investi-
gation. If the theory is true, it cannot be ultimate.
2. If it is not ultimate, the unity of things postulated
by thought and verified by science (of which Dr.
M'Taggart takes no account) forces us to the conclusion
that one of those wills belongs to an all-sovereign ^
Euler.

A few sentences are repeated from earlier works.
I have not thought it worth while to rewrite them
simply for the sake of novelty ; but they have always
been revised.

My obligations are too many and too various for
full enumeration. It may suffice here to say that
the most pervasive influences are those of Professor
Campbell Fraser and Bishop Westcott ; and in particular
chapters I owe much to (amongst others) Professors
Jevons of Durham and Allen of Cambridge, Mass., to
Dr. Harnack, and to the Master of Balliol. My best
thanks are due for oral criticism to Miss F. M. Stawell,
the late Forbes Eobinson, and Miss Edith Harington ;

^ Nicene Creed and N.T. iravroKpaTopa, not rravToSuva/xov, — a favourite
point of Westcott's. In any case God is limited by every attribute we
ascribe to him. An omnipotent God, in Dr. M'Taggart's sense, is an
absurdity not worth his elaborate refutation.

X PREFACE

and also to my wife for looking over the proofs. I have
also taken careful account of the criticism of certain
Jesuits in Scotland, and the resulting changes are some-
times in the desired direction.

Grange over Sands,
Easter Eve, 1906.

CONTENTS.

VOLUME I.

FIRST SEEIES.

LECTURW

I. Introductory .
II. First Considerations

III. Revelation in Nature

IV. Revelation in Man .
V. General Considerations (1)

VI. General Considerations (2)

VII. Inspiration, Prophecy, Miracle

VIII. Possible Methods of Revelation (1)

IX. Possible Methods of Revelation (2)

PAOR
1

30
52
87
123
141
168
197
225

SECOND SERIES.

X. Primitive Religion (1)
XI. Primitive Religion (2)
XII. Greece .

247
265
286

VOLUME

II.

,

XIII.

The Old Testament . . . . . 1

XIV.

The New Testament .

47

XV.

The Early Church .

73

XVI.

The Nicene Age

106

XVII.
XVIII.

Rome Pagan .

Rome Christian — Early (1)

128
151

XIX.

Rome Christian (2) .

175

XX.

Rome Christian (3) .

194

XXI.

The Reformation

220

XXII.

Modern Thought (1)

241

XXIII.

Modern Thought (2)

256

XXIV.

Modern Thought (3)

279

XXV.

Modern Thought (4)

300

XXVI.

The Future ,
Index .

323
331

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THE KlSrOWLEDGE OF GOD.

LECTURE I.

INTRODUCTORY.

My first duty here is to express my feeling of deep
responsibility for the charge entrusted to me on behalf
of the University of Edinburgh, to lay before you
without fear or favour, affection or misliking, the best
our God has given me to know upon the weighty
subject of Natural Theology ; and I pray him to give
me strength and wisdom, that my words may not be
quite unworthy of the great men who have spoken from
this place before me.

Turning then, like my predecessors, to Lord Gifford's
Deed of Foundation, I notice at once his direction " to
treat this greatest of all possible sciences, and indeed
in one sense the only science, as a strictly natural
science, without reference to or reliance upon any
supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous
revelation " : and this direction I heartily accept. If
I believe, as indeed I do believe, that the man who
spake as never man spake also did the works which
VOL. I. — I

2 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

none other man did, I believe also that if we take a
system as a whole and on its own shewing, it ought
provisionally to justify itself as a reasonable possibility
before we come to the particular evidence alleged in
its favour. For instance, the historical fact of Christ's
resurrection is an essential part of any system that can
reasonably be called Christian ; and if true, it must be
the central fact of history. Still, if we leave disputed
historical facts in suspense, the system as a whole,
specially including that resurrection represented as the
pledge of life won through death, ought to shew itself
such a reasonable scheme as may possibly prove true
when we come to the particular evidence for those facts.
In other words, we can discuss Christianity to a certain
distance without accepting its alleged miracles as true ;
but we cannot discuss it at all without accepting them
as parts of the system. If we leave them out of it we
shall not be discussing Christianity, but some figment of
our own.

I understand then that Natural Theology is to be
dealt with in a scientific spirit, " like astronomy or
chemistry," as our Founder says, and therefore with a
reasonable regard to the particular nature of its subject-
matter, and with liberty to take account of any facts
whatever which may seem to bear on it. And if ideas
suggested by Christian teaching, for example, commend
themselves to us on independent grounds, they ought
not to be prejudiced by the fact that they have likewise
commended themselves to a majority of civilized and
thinking men ever since the third century.

An alleged special revelation, whatever it be, is in

INTRODUCTORY 3

any case historical evidence that certain beliefs have
been held : and as I read further, I am encouraged
" freely to discuss the nature, origin, and truth " of such
beliefs — but as I understand, on grounds of reason only,
without reference to (meaning reliance upon) any personal
or institutional authority. All evidence of reason is
admissible, but all authority must go for nothing. By
grounds of reason I mean all facts of whatever nature
which reason may judge relevant to the question in
hand ; and by reliance on authority I mean all weight
allowed to the beliefs of persons or the teachings of
institutions beyond their reasonable value as personal
testimony. Such beliefs or teachings will often raise
a presumption — sometimes a strong presumption — that
we shall find evidence, and in some cases they lay us
under a serious obligation to see for ourselves how the
evidence really lies ; but evidence they are not, except
so far as they stand for personal testimony. Eeliance
on authority instead of reason is often passed off as a
modest deference to skilled opinion ; in fact, it is pure
scepticism.

An unhesitating appeal to reason as our only test
of truth seems to be not only an admissible method
of study, but the only method of study consistent with
regard to truth, and the only method which can issue
in serious beliefs. I am aware that it has not always
found favour among Christians — the Latin Church in
particular has usually sided with the Pharisees in
rejecting it — but it was the method of Jesus of
Nazareth, who came, as he said, that he might bear
witness of the truth, and never based his teaching on

4 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

any mere authority of his own. Positive as that
teacliing is, for he never hints a doubt, or even
speaks the word Perad venture, he offers every word
lie speaks to the judgment of reason, and in every
word assumes that reason is able to judge of truth
presented to it. To reason — the verdict of the whole
man — he appeals throughout ; and no man who bears
his name need grudge at having to lay his own
appeal before the same supreme and final court of
judgment.

This may be the place to note that in the phrase
" special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation,"
Lord Gilford seems to identify a special with a miraculous
revelation. If so, I do not feel bound to follow him
in this particular use of words. A revelation may, for
aught we know yet, be special without being miraculous ;
and in any case the two ideas will most conveniently be
kept apart till we come to the question whether they are
really distinct.

There is one thing more to be said before w^e
leave the Deed of Foundation. I notice the Pounder's
direction that these lectures are to be public and
popular, and open to all comers. This direction I
will endeavour to obey by making myself as plain
as I can to the " general and popular audience " of
which he speaks, without parade of learning and
without straining after novelty. Natural Theology is
a very old battle - ground : its questions have been
again and again fought out by the keenest intellects
of all ages, and we cannot hope to do more than look
at some of them from the particular standpoint of a

INTRODUCTORY 5

student of history in our own time. Our task will
be rather the verification and re-survey of old truth than
the more brilliant one of discovering new truth, though
perhaps that also will not be wholly wanting.

Our subject being the Knowledge of God, we shall
have to take account of all means by which men have
in any age thought it possible to get such knowledge.
But if there be knowledge on man's part, there must
be revelation on God's part ; for we cannot reasonably
limit our conception of revelation to supposed special
exceptional or miraculous communications. Any fact
which gives knowledge is a revelation. If particular
facts reveal God, they do so only by indicating a certain
character ; and though a miracle, if such there were,
would be likely to command attention, there is no
reason why it should indicate character more distinctly
than common facts. If so, revelation and the know-
ledge of God are correlative terms expressing two sides
of the same thing, and equally related to all things
which can in any way give that knowledge.

To sum up the proposed investigation at once, we
shall first discuss very shortly the question whether
revelation in the wide sense just given is possible, and
then first examine its nature (supposed possible) and
the form which it may be expected to take, so far as
it can be discussed on grounds of reason only. After-
wards, and this will be the second part of our work, we
shall have to compare our results with the conceptions
of it which men have actually formed.

Our object in taking shortly the possibihty of reve-

6 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

lation is simply to keep the work before us within
reasonable bounds. It would have been still shorter to
assume it summarily : and we might fairly have done so,
for if men have any knowledge even of God's existence,
they can only get it from facts which indicate it ; and
these facts, whatever they be, will constitute a revela-
tion. But we shall find it better formally to review the
assumptions implied in that possibility, because the
conditions on which revelation depends may be our best
guide to its nature. The study of this will be the
hardest part of our work, for we are at once confronted
with Butler's warning, that we are not competent judges
beforehand of what may be expected in a revelation.
That is true, in the sense Butler meant it ; but it is
not strictly pertinent, for his controversy with the Deists
was about a particular revelation, so that the larger
problem we have to deal with was not fully before him.
Moreover it was not so much his business to find out
how much can be said, as to shew that certain things
cannot safely be said. It may be that we shall find
some help not only in Butler's own argument, but in
things that were unknown or obscure in Butler's time.
At all events, we are free to ask questions and find for
ourselves the limits of our knowledge. For example, if
there be a revelation, what will be its main purpose ?
To what faculties will it speak, and how will it be
related to common knowledge ? Will it be general or
special, or both in different parts ? Will it be delivered
once for all complete, or will it be in any way a subject
of development ? Can we see any lines which it is
likely to follow, or any which it will certainly not

INTRODUCTORY 7

follow ? Though full answers to questions like these

may be far beyond our reach, I have confidence that

reverent and careful study will not be thrown away on

them. Butler was right in pleading the ignorance of

man, or more precisely our incompetency through

ignorance, against the hasty theorizing of the Deists ;

yet there was something in their shallow optimism

which we have hardly mastered even yet. We stand

indeed on higher ground than Butler, for the revolutions

of the nineteenth century have been a mighty revelation.

They have thrown forward with impressive emphasis

the old Teutonic thought of progress and development,

and the old Christian teaching of the dignity and worth

of man as man, or as the Christians would say, in

virtue of the image of God within him. If science has

firmly linked our body to the beasts that perish, anti-

christian thought itself at times has donned the prophet's

mantle, discoursing of our true affinity and likeness to

the mysterious force that works behind that veil of Isis

which no mortal has lifted yet. Looking backward to

the marvellous things our fathers witnessed, and forward

to the still mightier changes dawning on our children,

it would seem that the time is come to take up the

other side of Butler's work, and once more essay the

problem of the Deists, with more of knowledge, and

less I hope of random speculation.

After we have formed the best idea we can form
beforehand of revelation, we shall have to compare with
it the conceptions we find in history. On this part of
our work it will be enough for the present to say that
I shall devote myself chiefly to the three great lines

8 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

of ancient thought significantly joined by Pilate's title
written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and to the Christian
developments which came after them, including in the
latter much semichristian and some antichristian
thought. Of India and China I am not competent to
speak at first hand ; and other old religions are of less
importance. Excepting Egypt and Persia, they mostly
stand aside from the main course of history. Many of
them indeed are too crude to help us much, for it is a
great mistake of method to explain higher developments
by lower, instead of lower by higher. Symbols may
indicate realities, but the realities must interpret symbols.
In any case we shall not lose much by a certain limita-
tion of our work, for it is historically evident that the
triple cord of ancient thought united in the Gospel has
been the main line of the development of human thought
in matters of religion.

Waiving, then, the argument that the possibility of
revelation, if not the fact of it, can hardly be disputed
if there is any truth at all in religion, or even in science,
it may be convenient now to run over formally the
conditions of its possibility. These are four in number.
If there is a God — a personal Being above us and not
below us — I think we may take it as possible that he
may have something to reveal ; and then if he is able
to reveal it, if he may be supposed willing to do so, and
if man is able to receive it — on these four conditions
revelation is possible, and the question whether and how
far there is a revelation in such and such facts is simply
a question of evidence. A full discussion of these
conditions would carry us too far ; but we shall have to

INTRODUCTORY 9

notice the general character of the arguments which
seem to bear on them.

When I speak of God, I mean a personal Being above
us and not below us, a Being to whose greatness religion
pointed from the first, and in whose goodness it has
more and more in the course of ages found its final
rest and peace. All religion (as distinct from magic) is
a trustful communion with some such Being, however it
may be debased by mean conceptions of what is great
or good. It is not pure brute force before which the
savage crouches ; and civilized peoples always looked
for something better in their gods. In beasts they
worshipped knowledge beyond their own, and in men
they reverenced wisdom and beauty quite as much as
mere strength, and even those who stripped their God of
human feeling thought him so much the greater for the
want of it. The nobler the man, the purer his worship,
the more clearly we see the soaring aspiration of all
reasoning religion to a Being whose goodness around us
bears witness to his greatness above us. It was a new
thing in modern times when the unreason of the Agnostic
and the Pessimist looked downward for a deity instead
of upward. They do well to call it the Unknowable or
the Unconscious, for they would only make confusion if
they took the name of God in vain by using it of
something lower than the beasts of Egypt.

The existence of God cannot be logically demonstrated.
There are many proofs, but there is no demonstration ;
and those who insist on having one must be plainly told
that we have none to give. But neither can we logically
demonstrate the existence of self or of the world — of

10 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

the subject or the object, if we prefer the philosophical
terms. We cannot deduce it by self-evident logic in
the style of Euclid, because we have no self-evident
axioms behind it. The world and self and God are alike
in being final postulates of thought, and therefore
incapable of demonstration, so that a man who takes no
other pooof is bound to deny them all, as in fact they
have all been denied by various forms of ancient and
modern scepticism. The existence of God is not the
less certain for being the necessary postulate of every
argument instead of the logical conclusion of one
argument. The uniformity of nature, which some set
against it, is a postulate also assumed without demonstra-
tion. Each of them is an assumption — a theory if you
will — and there can be no logical demonstration of a
theory. The only proof of it we can have is when we
find that it describes facts, or in common language,
explains facts. Such proof is always open to objection ;
but in proper kind and quantity it is conclusive to every
man in his right mind.

We are not taking the immoral position that in-
sufficient evidence may be treated as sufficient ; but we
cannot help seeing that evidence which is not demon-
strative is accepted as sufficient in almost every act of
life. Neither do we hold, as some slander us, that the
wish to believe is the right to believe ; but we do
contend that every question must be determined by the
sort of evidence corresponding to its nature, and that we
have no right to demand some other sort. Thus we
accept the theory of gravitation because it describes a
vast number of relevant facts ; and we reject that of

INTRODUCTORY 11

transubstantiation because it explains nothing but the
one difficulty it was invented to explain, and only
explains that at the cost of much irrationality. A
theory is easily fitted to any one difficulty ; the test of
it is its explanation of other difficulties. Now the
existence of God is a theory which explains a world-wide
mass of facts, for though the presence of sin is a real
difficulty, we shall see that there is no reason to think it
fatal. The silence of science is not even a difficulty.
If Laplace was right in saying that science has neither
need nor room for God, he was right only because the
scope of science is limited. As commonly defined, it
describes phenomena, not origins, and deals with
sequences, never with true causation. Moreover, every
science begins rightly enough by selecting some facts or
aspects of facts as relevant, and setting aside others as
irrelevant ; and though one science will often take up
factors rightly neglected by another, we have no security
that science, meaning the sum of all the sciences, will
somewhere or other take full account of all such factors.
A method, then, which never gets beyond incomplete
accounts of things cannot decently pretend to finish with
complete descriptions of them. If the physicist finds no
God, the reason may be, not that there is no God, but
that it is no more his proper business than the coal-
heaver's to look for God.

In fact, the question whether Science can have
anything to say on " the hypothesis of a God " is simply
a matter of definition. A great advance was made in
the eighteenth century towards a clear separation
between origins and causes on one side, phenomena and

12 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

sequences' on the other — the one set of questions being
assigned to philosophy and rehgion, the other reserved
for science. This is the usual division, and much the
most convenient, for it corresponds to a difference of
subject-matter and a difference of method ; for we cannot
experiment on origins as we can on phenomena. The
distinction is real ; and if Eeligion used to ignore it,
Science has no excuse for following her bad example
now. The pretence of determining phenomena by-
religion, and the pretence of discovering origins by the
methods of science, are returns to a pre-scieutific past ;
and for unreason there is nothing to choose between
them.

If then science is limited, as is now usual, to questions
of phenomena and sequence, it manifestly cannot have
anything to say on questions of cause and origin ; and
if we extended it to such questions we should need
different methods, for we should have to take in many
considerations rightly ruled out from an investigation
limited to phenomena and sequences. There is no need
for confusion, unless we assume either that there are no
causes and origins, or that there are none which we can
know. In that case, of course, nothing exists for us
beyond sequences of events. Only our assumption is
philosophical, not scientific, for a science of sequences
only is self-condemned the moment it lays down any
doctrine about causes and origins.

But the two theories of gravitation and of the
existence of God are not on a level. Gravitation is
only a provisional theory, good till something better is
discovered, for nobody supposes it to be the complete

INTRODUCTORY 13

and final explanation of planetary and stellar motions.
It is a theory which has described them excellently ;
but we assume without hesitation that there is somethincr
behind it, so that if ever we discover that something we
shall be able to merge gravitation in some higher theory
which will not only describe all that gravitation
describes, but take in facts now unknown, or at least
unknown in their connexion with astronomical phenomena.
Yet even this higher theory will be as provisional as
gravitation itself, and liable to displacement by some
still higher theory. But the existence of God is a final
theory, not simply because we cannot get beyond it, but
because the personal action of such a Being is a true
cause and final explanation of the universe, of persons
as well as things. As all science assumes that nature
is a rational system, so thought itself consciously or
unconsciously assumes that there is a God. Atheism is
not even untrue ; it is universal confusion. If we think
things out instead of stopping half way, we are driven
to a theistic assumption.

Some theory we must make, if we are to reason at
all. We may suppose that there is a God, or that there
is no God ; or we may set aside the question by supposing
that we have no faculties to deal with it. Theism,
Non-Theism, and Agnosticism are exactly alike in being
theories, or rather groups of theories ; and there is no
reason for preferring one to another unless it describes
facts better. They have all had supporters, and
therefore presumably something to say for themselves ;
but Theism has been the creative force in history, and
remains the general belief of serious men. Eeligion

14 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

without reason is painfully common, and reason without
religion is not unknown ; but there can be no rational
religion outside Theism. The Pantheist cannot worship,
except so far as he personifies his god. The Agnostic
has an ethical system he cannot make rational without
a god ; but he rightly refuses to worship the unknown
Force he sets to hold the place of God. Others may
have religions : only the Theist has a religion which can
be rational.

If religion is not quite universal, it is very nearly
universal. If tribes without religion can be found, they
are found among the most degraded of savages. If
individuals of the most cultivated nations tell us that
they have no religion, what they tell us is not always
the fact, for men often think they have no religion
when they have only thrown off some particular
religion. If indeed they have no religion, they have
none only because they have really thrown it off. The
atheist, like the Christian, is not born but made, though
made by an opposite process. Buddhism is the only
great system which can be said in any sense to ignore
religion ; and even that is no real growth of irreligion,
but a religious reaction from an unsatisfactory religion,
and soon gathered round it religious observances in
abundance. Thus even Buddhism supports the general
conclusion that religion is a primary instinct of human
nature.

One of the simplest — as well as one of the deepest —
arguments which point in the direction of Theism is the
admitted fact appealed to by Lotze, Eoyce, and others,
that things (including ourselves) influence each other in

INTRODUCTORY 15

definite ways, and are therefore not independent. Action
between two independent things is not made possible
by the mediation of a third thing or of any number
of things which are ex hypothesi independent of both.
Contact may be a condition of such action, but it is no
sort of explanation of it. But if we suppose a relation
of any kind between them, we must admit that they are
not independent of each other. And if things are not
independent of each other, they must all (including
ourselves) be dependent on something else. If then
they act on each other, they must be direct or indirect
products or manifestations of one or more powers
working through them ; and ultimately of one power
only, for independent powers are independent things and
therefore impossible. And this power will on its side
have relations to things, for relations cannot be one-
sided, and will shew its unity, as all unity must be
shewn, in the differences of things. And if the system
is rational — and we cannot reason about it at all
without assuming so much — we cannot escape the
conclusion that the power behind it is also rational.

This may suffice to suggest a theory of a more or
less theistic sort ; but as we go further we are driven
by many considerations to the more definite theory of
a personal God.

We are driven to it by the moral necessity of finding
for persons as well as things a cause beyond the scientific
forces which cannot work themselves, and the scientific
sequences which cannot be more than effects of deeper
though still insufficient " causes." We are driven to it
again for the origin of that life and consciousness which

IG THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

no scientific alchemy has yet been able to derive from
matter. Yet again we are driven to it for the origin of
conscience with its mysterious whisperings of duty and
with its Titanic tempests of remorse, which no Natural-
istic sleight-of-hand can trace back to the great twin
brethren, Matter and Force. Collateral products and
psychophysical parallelism are words to conjure with ;
but no conjuring can get conscience out of matter. We
are driven to our assumption by matter with its mysteries
of order and development, by life with its mysteries of
thought and conscience. Must we have logical demon-
stration of that which underlies logic, or must we see
God in the sky, as Lalande scoffed, or get him into our
laboratories for analysis, before we are persuaded ?
Christians are not the only people who walk by faith
and not by sight. We all do it, and must do it every
moment of our life. Even as we venture from step to
step, whether of common life or of the abstrusest
scientific argument, in faith that the sequences of nature
will not fail us, so we wing our way from earth to heaven
in faith that these sequences are not without a cause.

This is the theistic challenge ; and, so far as I can
find, it has never been answered.

Attempted replies have mostly confused the issue as
between origin and development, cause and method, con-
crete facts and scientific abstractions ; and some of them
summarily forbid us to ask for causes at all. In fact,
science as defined by its own advocates has nothing to
do with cause or origin, and only deals with concrete
facts by abstracting from them. For instance, there
seems reason to believe that the sidereal universe is

INTRODUCTORY 17

finite, both in space and time ; but if it were eternal, it
would none the less need a cause. Given a series of
sequences of which no one is caused by those before it,
we do not reach a true cause by taking an infinite
number of them. We do not solve a problem by the
easy method of adjourning it to infinity. If a cause is
needed for a finite series, it is equally needed for an
infinite series ; and no cause can be sufficient unless it
works continuously along the series : and if matter and
force do not now constitute such a cause, there is no
reason to suppose that they ever did.

So too of life. If all life were definitely traced back
to a single germ, that germ would still have to be
accounted for, and would be no easier to account for
than the whole complex of life which has arisen from
it. Its " simplicity " would be delusive, involving as it
would all that has ever been evolved from it. In the
midst of inorganic matter it must have arisen, but as a
solitary object of a higher order, for the gulf between is
yet unbridged, and moreover never can be bridged, till
scientific proof is found that matter is not inert, but
can of itself produce life.^ It is random guesswork to
bring life hither in the crevices of a meteorite from some
other world. Such a theory is full of difficulties, has
no evidence in its favour, and at best only moves the

^ It is too soon yet to judge whether Mr. Butler Burke's interesting dis-
coveries will be finally verified. But if they are fully confirmed, as they
very well may be, they will prove only that matter can produce life under
our direction. The question whether it can produce life of itself —W\^.t is
to say, without our direction, will stand exactly where it stood before.
Should this second question ever be answered in the affirmative, it will
be a result of the highest significance ; but, as we shall see presently, it
no way touches our argument.
VOL. I. — 2

18 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

difficulty one step further back. And it is worse than
random guesswork to lay down the law, that life " must "
have come from matter, not on evidence, but simply to
round off a theory.

Yet after all it matters little. Life is life, with all
its mystery ; and that mystery is no way diminished by
any particular theory of its origin. If it did arise from
matter, the right conclusion would not be that life is
less wonderful, but that matter is more wonderful than
we supposed. The mystery would remain exactly what
it was before, and we should not have gained a single
step towards an explanation of it. Tlie only difference
would be that we should cease to speak of matter as
inert. The change might confound the Deist, who
believes in a distant engineer ; but the Christian might
fairly reply, that he for one will not presume to decide
what may or may not be produced from matter by the
immanent working of a living God.

So also of conscience. Eudimentary it may have
been, like other things in the far past, and some of its
outcomes revolting ; but there it was. The oldest
Babylonians had a conscience as real as our own, for
however their judgment of what is right or wrong may
have differed from ours, they were just as clear as we
are that some things are right and others wrong.
Conscience may have been shaped historically by subtle
selfishness and social sanctions ; but it cannot be re-
solved into these, and indeed is often sternly opposed to
both, and therefore cannot have been developed out of
them. The particular judgments of right and wrong
which these may explain are surface matters : the sense

INTRODUCTORY 19

itself of right and wrong is what has to be accounted
for ; and it is as distinct from the sense of utility as
that is from the sense of beauty. There is no account-
ing for it as a function of animal life, far less as a
function of matter. Physical processes belong to one
order, the sense of guilt to another.

Coming now to the question whether God supposed
existent is able to give a revelation, we are at once
confronted with one of the most significant of all the
facts we shall have to deal with. Every argument
which goes to verify our assumption as regards the
bare existence of God goes equally to prove that he is
a God of a certain character, so that each as it is
accepted compels us to say something definite about him.
Thus if he is the final cause of all causes, he must have
power to be a sufficient cause. If he is the ultimate
origin of life and personality, he must have life and
personality himself. If he has given us a moral sense,
he must himself be its concrete embodiment. An
agnostic attitude at this point is not even decently self-
consistent. If a force works through all things, we
ought to have ample material for finding out something
of its nature ; and if it is known to work by law, we
know something about it, and it cannot be utterly
inscrutable. The agnostic position is as if Euclid
worked out his demonstration complete, and then turned
round of a sudden to dispute the Q.E.D. He is not
reasoning, but simply refusing to reason. When Herbert
Spencer tells us that " the Power manifested through-
out the universe, distinguished as material, is the same
Power which in ourselves wells up in the form of

20 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

consciousness," he comes very near — if we will only
think it out — to the Christian belief in " a universe
which is everywhere alive," not with life of its own,
but through the immanence of a living God. It is a
juggle of words to answer that we have " no strict
knowledge," meaning scientific knowledge. If we cannot
weigh or analyse God, neither can we weigh or analyse
many things whose existence is unquestioned — our
neighbour's love or hatred, or indeed our neighbour
himself, for example. We know them only by inference
from outward signs ; and if such knowledge is valid in
their case, why should not similar knowledge of God
be valid also ? The only way in which the Agnostic
can come to terms — after a fashion — with reason is by
maintaining that partial knowledge is no knowledge at
all ; that if we do not know the ultimate mystery of a
thing, we have no knowledge of it at all. And this is
a position which destroys the reality of all knowledge,
and therefore the validity of all reasoning ; for if there
is any one truth on which all serious thinkers are
agreed, it is that no single thing is completely known
to us. Omnia dbeunt in mysterium. If therefore we
cannot trust partial knowledge as far as it goes, there
is nothing left which we can trust.

If God is the ultimate cause of matter, life, and
conscience, it is hardly possible to dispute his power
to give a revelation, if he so please. As we are making
no suppositions about its character, we will not ask now
whether matter, life, and conscience are not themselves
a revelation ; but surely the power which was able to
cause man's existence must a fortiori be able to send

INTRODUCTORY 21

him a message. It need not be in spoken words, much
less written in a l)Ook : anything whatever by which
one person conveys his thought to another makes a
message. The beasts can speak to us : is God lower
than they ? No matter yet whether man would be
able to receive a message : our question is whether God
would be able to send it. The only obstacle we can
imagine is a severance between God and man so
complete that even God cannot reach across it. Such
a position might be taken with some show of reason by
the Deist, who does make a severance as soon as he
has got past the work of creation, though it is not open
to the Agnostic, whose unknowable Force co-operates
with all the forces of the physical world. Yet even
the deistic severance will not suffice, for it is no result
from the ultimate nature of things, or from any intrinsic
fitness of right and wrong, but simply the present
method of the divine government. So far from being
unable to bridge it over, God has already reached across
it, first in creation, then to give what the Deist calls
natural religion, however unwilling he may be to give
a further special revelation. However, the answer is
simple. A severance which puts it beyond God's power
to give a revelation must result from the ultimate
nature of things, and equally put it beyond his power
to cause the existence of the world. If he has ever
touched the world at all, and still more if he is
immanent in it, there can hardly be any reason before-
hand for doubting his power to touch it for the purpose
of giving a revelation. His willingness is another ques-
tion, which comes next.

22 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Is it, then, a tenable supposition that God may be
willing to give a revelation ? The question must be
put quite generally, because for anything we know yet
to the contrary there may be particular reasons why a
particular revelation should not be given at a particular
time, to particular men, or in a particular manner. If
the Koran, for instance, be such a revelation, it might
have been choked out between Eome and Persia before
they were weakened and demoralized by the great strife
of Chosroes and Heraclius ; or if the Gospel, the fulness
of time was hardly come for the universal Family till
the universal Empire had arisen to clear the way. We
can see that a message once impressed on stiff-necked
Israel had a better prospect of safe keeping than in the
hands of unstable Edom, and that a message given to
Toltecs or Chinese might have taken centuries to reach
the central shores of Greece and Syria ; and it is
equally clear that a mere worship or a mere philosophy
which appealed to heart or mind alone would leave
the half of human need unsatisfied, and that a message
revealed only in flaming fire would have to be respect-
fully forgotten, if it was not to put reason to permanent
confusion. But particular objections are not enough.
Kevelation cannot be pronounced impossible on the score
of God's unwillingness unless some general objection
can be shewn, covering either all times, all persons, all
places, or all modes of action in the matter.

Such an objection is often found in a view of natural
law widely current among ourselves. The world, it is
said, is worked entirely by uniform natural sequence ;
and if there is a God to give a revelation, this uniform

INTRODUCTORY 23

natural sequence must express his nature, or at least his
will, so that revelation being a breach of it is not only-
incredible but unthinkable, for it represents God as willing
at once the sequence and the breach of it, which is absurd.
This is the argument : and if uniform natural sequence
fully expresses the will of God, and if revelation is a
breach of it, there is no reply. Bradlaugh's picture of
the great monkey in heaven stood so far for perfectly
sound argument. It was a fair caricature, all the more
offensive for its truth, of the irrational idea, still very
common among Christians, that the proof of revelation
lies precisely on this, that it breaks the natural sequence.
Well, does it ? In the first place, the world is not
entirely worked by uniform natural sequence, unless our
consciousness of freedom is a delusion, for natural
sequence is deflected at every moment when forces are
co-ordinated by personal action. I cannot even catch
a ball without so co-ordinating the action of my arms as
to deflect the natural sequence that a ball thrown up
falls to the ground; but the "law" of gravitation is not
broken, for the weight on my hand shows that it is
acting still If the answer be that personal action must
be included in our conception of what is natural, this may
be granted as a matter of definition. Only, in that case
any similar co-ordinating action of a personal God (if
such there be) must be included as well as our own.
The decisive question is not the definition of words, but
the reality of freedom, divine and human. If God and
man are not entirely subject to the uniform sequences
we find in the physical world, the result of personal
action differs from that which uniform sequence would

24 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

otherwise give ; and this difference is not abolished when
both are included in one definition. Is there or is there
not a breach of sequence when it is deflected by personal
action ? If there is, we must cease to speak of sequence
as uniform, for we see such breaches every day. If not,
then even so-called miracles considered as personal
action are so far credible beforehand. It may indeed
be said that while man's action is uncertain, God cannot
be supposed to vary from his own law. But the " law "
of the physical world is not a self-acting force : it is
only a theory of our own to describe sequences im-
perfectly known ; and there is no reason to think that
with our present powers we shall ever come to a perfect
knowledge of them. Natural " law " not including
personal action cannot be a perfect expression of God's
nature or will, though it must be true so far as it goes.
At all events, the part of it known to us cannot be more
than an imperfect expression which leaves room for a
further expression by other means, if other means there
be. Any such further expression must of course
harmonize with that already known ; but we may
expect it lo give us a different point of view, and
most likely not to be another such series of uniform
sequences as we find in the physical world. If natural
" law " is to be a perfect expression of God's nature or
will, it must include personal action, and that as its
highest part ; and if freedom is real — a fact we know as
directly as we know any natural sequence — personal
action is not uniform. If therefore natural " law," so
far as we know it, is not uniform in its highest part,
we have no right to assume that a fuller knowledge

INTRODUCTORY 25

of the universe would reveal to us nothing but
uniformity. To put it shortly, any further expres-
sion there may be will not contradict what we know
already ; but we cannot take for granted that it will
follow the lower line of uniformity rather than the
higher line of freedom.

A second objection came into view with the Coper-
nican astronomy, played a great part in the eighteenth
century, and underlies much current thought in our own
time, though it does not always come to the surface.
We are told that if the earth were the centre of the
universe, with sun, moon, and stars created to give it
light, man as its ruler would hold a position of great
dignity, and might possibly be not unworthy to receive
a revelation ; but it is absurd to suppose that the ruler
of the great sidereal system would give one to the
inhabitants of an insignificant planet like this — one
among millions, and one of the least of them. Now
let us look at the ideas which are needed to make this
objection reasonable. It must be thought, then, that the
importance of heavenly bodies varies in a general way
with their size, so that while the sun is more important
than the earth, Arcturus and Capella are likely to be
more important than the sun. It is also supposed that
there must be an indefinite number of stars, or at least
planets, inhabited like the earth. It is further assumed
that God's care is limited to great things, and it is taken
for granted that spirit in man has no indefinite superi-
ority over matter.

Without these assumptions the objection falls at once ;
yet none of them can be proved, and such knowledge as

26 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

we have weighs heavily against all but one of them.
It is certain of sun, moon, and stars, and nearly certain
of the planets (Mars and Venus at most excepted), that
they are no seats of any life at all like ours. Stars no
doubt may have planets, and if none are known the
fault may be in our telescopes ; but if their history
resembles the earth's, very few of them can at a given
time be in the particular stage of evolution suited for any
such life as ours. However, it is hardly worth while to
discuss hypothetical inhabitants of hypothetical planets.
Nor does the theory of evolution give any countenance
to the belief that life is not of a higher order than
matter. As we shall see presently, its results point
with emphasis the other way, and if this be so the
earth with life may be of more worth than the rest of
the universe without life. But the worst fallacy is the
assumption that God cares only for great things. A
more unscientific position could hardly be imagined.
There is no careless work in Nature. A gnat is
made as accurately as a man, a microscopic Helwpelta
turned as skilfully as a watchcase. If there is a God
at all, things like these must be his doing, by whatever
laws he does them. And if the evidence is overwhelm-
ing, that the minute things of the earth are not beneath
his attention, we cannot assume that the earth itself and
man are in such sense insignificant as to make it likely
beforehand that he is too full of other work to give a
revelation. This difficulty at all events is imaginary.

A third objection is^. less commonly made, though to
my own mind it seems ib raise more serious doubts than
either of the former. What of sin ? By sin I mean

INTRODUCTORY 27

something more than the existence of ignorance and
animal passion, and something difterent from physical
evil, and from the unripeness and imperfection of our
present stage of growth. I mean the fact witnessed by
conscience, that by fault of our own we are very far
gone from the moral law which is written in our hearts.
We are not now concerned with the evolution of sin, on
which science has thrown such unexpected light, or with
its relation to the neutral passions of the animal nature,
but simply with the present fact of its existence. This
is a fact with which many schools of thought have
dealt superficially. It is meaningless, of course, to those
who deny the existence of a moral law, or seek refuge
from it in some theory of determinism. Let them
make their peace as best they can with the awful figure
of Eemorse, the horrible Medusa's head which once
revealed, the mightiest passions of human nature, and
" the will to live " itself, fall dead before it. Others also,
men of just renown, have practically explained away the
idea of sin. Ovid is not counted among the philosophers,
yet there is a deeper thought in his

Video meliora proboque,
Deteriora sequor

than in the resolution of sin into ignorance by Socrates,
which seems to miss its relation to the will. Sin is not
indeed the primary fact of human nature, and it would
be a great mistake to base religion on the consciousness
of sin ; but we have reason to think it a very grave fact,
especially when we consider in the light of modern
science the far-reaching and enduring consequences of
personal action. If the moral law be any expression of

28 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

God's nature, or even of his will, it cannot be a matter
of indifference to him that we have disobeyed the law
which he set before us, and done all the evil that is
done on the face of the earth. There is something,
however, to set against this ; for if our evil-doing is an
offence which may, for aught we know, keep back a
revelation, the evil condition into which we have brought
ourselves is an appeal to him which may, for aught we
know, call forth a revelation beyond that which is
implied in the very fact of disobedience. Be that as
it may, the existence of sin would seem at all events
fatal to any summary assumption that he must give some
further revelation. All that can be added at this stage of
the argument is that neither is it safe to dogmatize the
other way, by laying down for certain that he will not.

Our last question remains. If the possibility of reve-
lation is not hindered by any want of power or want
of willingness on God's part to give it, may it not be
hindered notwithstanding by want of power on man's
part to receive it ? Want of willingness on his part,
and the extent to which it may defeat the purpose
(whatever that be) of the revelation, we iieed not now
discuss ; for if a revelation is given at all, it is equally
given whether man will hear or whether he will forbear.
But supposing him willing to receive a revelation, has
he the power ? Such power cannot be less than power
to verify its rationality, its origin, and its moral
character, and to understand what it requires us to be
or to do. Some find that power in the understanding
only, others in the convergent faculties of the whole
man, others again in some peculiar and mysterious

INTRODUCTORY 29

power of intuition ; so that there is a very consideral)le
body of somewhat miscellaneous opinion agreed that in
one way or another he has the power required. But at
opposite ends of the scale stand two groups of thinkers
who deny it. Extremes meet, as usual ; and are more
nearly allied to each other than to intermediate forms
of thought. The Agnostics of lielief and the Agnostics
of unbelief are heartily agreed that man as man has
no faculties to receive a revelation. This fundamental
position they hold in common, and there the wiser of
them stop. It is a secondary development when others
introduce an infallible authority of some sort, some-
how (which on their theory must mean miraculously)
empowered to declare the truth, and therefore claiming
from us obedience without regard to reason, which they
consider essentially misleading. Both grouj^s are en-
tangled in the general bad logic of Agnosticism, which
makes the fact that we cannot find out the Almighty to
perfection an excuse for not trying to find out anything
at all. But the more advanced group is hampered by
the further difficulty that the infallible authority which
is to be obeyed without regard to reason cannot be re-
cognized except by reason ; and the reason which is not
competent to recognize a revelation must be equally
incompetent to recognize an authority which can only
be declared by revelation.

Upon the whole there appears to be no proof that a
revelation is impossible. We shall therefore go on to
study its nature as that of something we may find in
history, without any misgivings that we are discussing an
impossible conception, a Chimcera homhinans in vacuo.

LECTURE 11.

FIKST CONSIDERATIONS.

Though most persons who are not Agnostics will agree
that it is legitimate and often very necessary to ask
whether an alleged revelation is what it professes to be,
there are many who shrink from the cognate and indeed
preliminary question, what may be expected beforehand
from a revelation, and what sort of line it is likely to
take. In practice they will often argue with some
boldness from the natural fitness of things, as that a
revelation must be perfectly clear, or that it must be
given alike to all men, or again that it must constitute
some infallible authority or be embodied in an infallible
book, or lay down some system of government in Church
or State, or ordain some authoritative ceremonial of
sacrifice or other worship — on the ground that it is
the necessary business of a revelation to settle things
like these beyond the risk of mistake. They will
build whole systems without hesitation on assumptions
of this kind as self-evident truths ; yet when they are
fairly confronted with the question, the men who were
so positive just now will sometimes answer piously, that
it would be rash to say beforehand what a revelation
will be like, for we really have no faculties to deal

80

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 31

with such a question. It will be whatever God may
please to give us ; and this is all that we can know
beforehand.

It must be granted that in all ages much rashness
has been committed in the matter. The natural man
likes to walk by sight and not by faith, and never quite
understands that a mystery is of necessity partly known
as well as partly unknown. He has no patience for the
half lights of finite knowledge, and the parables and
sacraments of life which speak of better things than
reason can fully grasp. Light or dark ? is his only
question. If he cannot see his way quite clear, he will
ask for some one good work that he may do it and enter
into life, or at any rate some precise law that shall
relieve him from the burden of thought and the re-
sponsibility of action. If he finds that he cannot do
everything for himself, he wants everything done for
him. So he is apt to take for granted either that re-
velation must make everything perfectly clear to reason,
or that it will be a detailed system of arbitrary commands
which reason must not presume to discuss.

Our question is not only legitimate, but necessary.
We cannot discuss the genuineness of an alleged re-
velation in any other way than by comparing it with a
standard already in our minds. The general idea must
always come before the particular. Such a standard is
likely to be more or less vague and incomplete, and to
" leave many things abrupt " ; but we cannot move a
step in the matter without a standard of some sort.
Indeed, we cannot help having a standard, for we cannot
seriously contemplate the possibility of revelation with-

32 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

out some belief in God's existence, and therefore some
more or less definite ideas of his nature.

It may be said again from another point of view that
our question is not scientific but purely speculative,
and therefore unprofitable, — that the only legitimate
method is to reason back from ascertained facts to find
out whether a revelation has been given, and if so, of
what sort it was, and to make no theories except for
the temporary jjurpose of focussing our thoughts or
suggesting lines of study. The answer is that we shall
not be making imaginary models of a world. The one
sound method is simply to reason on ascertained facts
according to their nature, backward or forward as
occasion may require ; so that if we can find facts prior
to revelation, we are perfectly free to reason forward
from them — from what we know of God to what may
be expected from him, from facts to their conse-
quences, not from imaginations to castles in the air.
We shall need to walk warily, but we are treading no
forbidden ground. We shall fail as others have failed
if we expect to see things in their full meaning suh
specie ceternitatis. Yet the failures of the past may help
us towards the genuinely scientific success of pushing
the veil of mystery a little farther back. In this sense
we shall find our way by the carcases of them that have
gone before.

I invite your attention to an answer attempted near
two hundred years ago. It may be more successful
in clearing the question than it was in solving the
problem.

Matthew Tindal was a man of mark. He was born

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 33

during Cromwell's protectorate, and came up to Oxford
with crude opinions of a High Church sort, so that he
fell an easy prey to the " Eoman emissaries " in
James ii's reign, though not for long. Early in 1688
he was convinced of " the absurdities of popery," and
settled down in life as a free-thinking churchman, and
a formidable opponent of the "independence of the
Church upon the State" preached by the High-fliers
of Queen Anne's time. In 1706 his Bights of the
Christian Church, in defence of the Erastian constitution
of England, drew forth more than twenty answers from
the gladiators of the Church. Henceforth he was
" Satan's darling sou " to men like Francis Atterbury
and his own old college tutor, the nonjuror Hickes.
Tindal was an advocate of note in 1696, when John
Toland raised the standard of Deism in his Christianity
not Mysterious, and saw a whole generation of younger
combatants pass away before he came forward himself,
on the evening of life, to sum up on behalf of Deism
the floating doubts of the eighteenth century in his
Christianity as old as the Creation, published in 1730

The Deists are forgotten now, and even their con-
querors are out of fashion. The literary person of our
time is hardly equipped without a second-hand sneer at
Butler. Yet those old-world questions were the crude
beginnings of the great controversy on the possibility
and meaning of revelation which seems gathering to
its hottest battle in our generation ; and Tindal was
not unworthy of the place he held among its early
leaders.

Like a true son of the eighteenth century, he begins
VOL. I. — 3

34 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

with God as a creator and moral governor outside the
world, and man as knowing him by reason, and by
reason only. God is good, and can have no motive
but the good of his creatures, so that he cannot have
refused them the revelation which was needed to give
them happiness. This Natural Eeligion Tindal describes
as " the belief in the existence of God, and the sense
and practice of those duties which result from the
knowledge we have by reason of him and his per-
fections, of ourselves and our imperfections, and of our
relation to him and to his other creatures ; so that
Natural Eeligion takes in everything that is founded on
the reason and nature of things." Like its author, it
must be absolutely perfect, eternal, and unchangeable.
It must be absolutely reasonable, for nothing but
reasoning can improve reason, by which alone we know
God. It must be perfectly clear and simple, else its
purpose, which is the happiness of all men, would be
defeated. It must be original and universal, for all
men have equal need of it, and God wills all men to be
saved. It must also be sufficient — not that all must
have the same knowledge of it, but all must have
sufficient knowledge. We cannot suppose that " after
men had been for many ages in a miserable condition,
God thought fit to amend the eternal, universal Law of
Nature by adding certain observances to it, not founded
on the reason of things ; and that those, out of his
partial goodness, he communicated only to some,
leaving the greatest part in their former dark and
deplorable state."

Hence generally, he concludes, Eevealed Eeligion

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 35

caunot differ from Natural except in the mode of com-
munication ; else one or the other would be defective,
and a reproach to its author. It cannot be more than
a republication of Natural Eeligion ; and anything
further it may seem to contain, not being founded on
nature and reason, cannot properly belong to it. Such
additional matter must be either arbitrary (or positive)
precepts, which imply that God changes his mind, or
else unintelligible dogmas — mere " orthodox paradoxes "
— like the Trinity, which really tell us nothing because
they mean nothing. If men have gone astray from
Natural Eeligion, they have mostly been led astray by
the priests, and by the idea that God has pleasure in
cruelty. So much worse is superstition than Atheism.
Christianity therefore, if rightly understood, is as old as
Creation. Christ came to preach, not new duties but
repentance for breach of the old ; or, in other words, to
free men from the load of superstition which had been
mixed up with religion. His concern, as he said, was
only with the sinners; and his commands extend not
beyond moral things, leaving all questions of mere means
to human discretion. Scripture is at most a secondary
rule of life, for it depends on and constantly appeals
to Natural Eeligion, which indeed is our only means of
knowing even that God is not deceiving us. Moreover,
it is obscure, uncertain, and in its literal sense often
downright immoral. Yet if we depart from the literal
sense, we are not honestly taking it for our guide.
Therefore from first to last we have nothing but Natural
Eeligion to rely on.

This is Tindal's position, stated as near as may be

36 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

ill his own words. We notice in the last clauses his
appeal to the rooted superstition of the English, that the
strict literal sense of a document is " the plain meaning "
which no honest man will think of disputing. He is
a thorough Puritan in this matter ; and he is quite
representative in his want of common sense, for even
now by far the larger number of the popular (I do not
mean the serious) objections to Christianity assume it as
manifest that the Bible must stand or fall by its literal
meaning. Yet a lawyer like Tindal might have re-
membered that even a clause of a will is not construed
imconditionally in its literal sense without regard to the
general meaning of the document and to other facts
which may clear up the testator's intention.

Butler's is a work of wider scope, for he has various
opponents in view ; but so far as concerns Tindal, his
main argument is purely critical. Far from fully
stating his own beliefs, he consents to reason on opinions
like the opinion of necessity, which he plainly tells us
he does not believe, and leaves out doctrines of the
utmost importance which he does believe, like the
essential morality of acts. His main , thesis as against
Tindal is that parts of revelation not found in Natural
Keligion are not on that account to be rejected. He
agrees that God is the creator and moral governor of the
world, and that the purpose (not the scope) of Natural
Religion is pretty much as Tindal states it ; nor would
he have cared to dispute its sufficiency for man — apart
from sin. To sinless beings in some other world it may
be that God is pure benevolence ; but to us he is a
moral governor. Tindal's enormous oversight has not

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 37

escaped him. " The generality of mankind are so far
from having that awful sense of things, which the
present state of vice and misery and darkness seems to
make but reasonable, that they have scarce any appre-
hension or thought at all about this matter, any way ;
and some serious persons may have spoken unadvisedly
concerning it. But . . . consider what it is for
creatures, moral agents, presumptuously to introduce
that confusion and misery into the kingdom of God,
which mankind have in fact introduced ; to blaspheme
the Sovereign Lord of all ; to contemn his authority ;
to be injurious to the degree they are to their fellow-
creatures, the creatures of God." Natural Keligion is
not the simple and sufficient rule Tindal takes it for.
Men generally cannot reason it out in its purity, and
will not if they can ; and in any case need a standing
reminder of it. Moreover, " divine goodness, with
which, if I mistake not, we make very free in our
speculations, may not be a bare single disposition to
produce happiness, . . . perhaps an infinitely perfect
mind may be pleased with the moral piety of moral
agents in and for itself, as well as upon account of its
being essentially conducive to the happiness of his
creation." Yet further, the present life seems to be an
education for another, so that we cannot expect to have
everything quite clear in it.

Accordingly, Christianity is not a simple republication
of Natural Religion, but an authoritative republication
of it in its genuine simplicity, confirmed by fresh
evidence, embodied in a visible church, and secured by
express commands to all Christians to preserve it and

38 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

transmit its benefits to future times. Besides this, it
contains an account of " a dispensation of things not at
all discoverable by reason, carrying on by the Son and
the Spirit for the recovery and salvation of mankind,"
who are represented to be in a state of ruin. We find
then certain additional doctrines revealed, and sundry
duties enjoined in consequence of them. These doctrines
present no difficulties but such as we find in Natural
Religion, which is accepted notwithstanding ; and they
have the further confirmation of miracle and prophecy.
The duties arise in part directly from the facts revealed
— as if the Son of God is indeed our Saviour, Natural
Religion itself will tell us that we owe certain duties to
him. As for positive commands — those whose grounds
we do not see — they are certainly inferior to the moral
precepts which are written in our hearts ; but they are
not therefore unimportant, for the fact, if fact it be,
that they are of divine appointment " lays us under an
obligation to obey them — an obligation moral in the
strictest and most proper sense."

Tindal was no mean controversialist, but he has
fared ill in the stronger hands of Butler. It can
hardly be denied that on the admitted premises and
within the limits of Butler's purpose his argument is
triumphant. Others may dispute the premises, but
the Deist can make no reply. Though the doubts of
later times have shifted far away from Deism, Butler's
method is a lesson for all ages, his arguments have often
lost nothing of their force, and many of his grave
warnings might have been written for the hasty thinkers
of our time.

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 39

Nevertheless, the teaching of history has carried us
far beyond the arguments of 1736. In the light of
science we see now that the world is not a machine
made once for all by some great engineer's hand from
outside, but an organism slowly developed by a power
working from within. Even Tindal was not without
some idea of progress in revelation, as where he tells us
that a special law was given to the Jews, or that a
prohibition of usury " would now be immoral." But
these with him are only passing inconsistencies : to us
they are commonplaces, for the idea of evolution
dominates both history and religion. If it has destroyed
some of the old teleological statements, it has restored
them to us on a vaster scale, by forcing us to look
for mind in the whole development, and to recognize
in the physical world, and still more in the spiritual
nature of man, no mere creatures of a divine will, but
revelations of the divine nature. It has also taught
us to abandon the barren idea of this life as 7nere pro-
bation, which meaner men gathered from Butler's words
without noticing how carefully he explained it as
education and training, and to see in this life's trials
our preparation for some higher stage of development.

This glance back at the Deist Controversy and the
changes the question has undergone in later times may
suffice to indicate some of the conditions and some of
the difficulties of the problem before us. When we
essay it ourselves, we shall be free to use all the re-
sources of science and criticism, and to take useful hints
wherever we can find them. Thus the Muslim idea of
revelation gathers it up in a book, the Christian in a

40 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Person described as, he that liveth and was dead, and
is alive for ever more. These are ideas we may find
worth comparing with each other and with the best
idea we can form in our own way ; and we may find it
useful to notice how far each system has in its historical
career been true to its central thought.

Now I think we are free to begin our proper work.

In our discussion of the question what a revelation is
likely to be, and what idea we can form beforehand of
the lines it will take, we start from the fact already
noticed, that there is no argument which stops short
at the bare existence of God. As we have seen, every
consideration which goes to verify our assumption that
there is a God goes equally to show that he is a God of
such or such a sort, and compels us to hold such or
such definite beliefs about him. In fact, we cannot
believe in the existence of anything whatever without
some conception of its nature. We may call it the
Unknowable, but we cannot believe that it exists unless
we think we know somethinc^ about it. The unknowable
is the unthinkable.

The word God is one that ought not to be ambiguous.
Theists ^ and Antitheists are generally agreed that it
means a personal Being of infinite rightness and infinite
goodness, wielding infinite wisdom and infinite power.
The existence of such a Being the Theist affirms and the
dogmatic Atheist denies, while the Pantheist refines away
his personality, the Polytheist his attributes, and the

^ I speak of Theists throughout in the broad sense which includes all
believers in one personal God, not in the narrower sense which would
exclude Deists and Christians.

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 41

Agnostic tells us that with our faculties it is futile to
discuss the matter. The answers are various enough ;
but there is no ambiguity in the question, Is there such
a Being, or is there not ?

We have coupled together rightness and goodness as
referring to the divine nature, wisdom and power to its
outward action ; and this appears to be what Theists
usually mean, though their words often do injustice to
their thought. Even the Muslim tells us that Allah is
merciful and forgiving ; and however he may magnify
the attribute of naked power, he will in the end hardly
refuse to admit that he presumes it to be the instrument
of a will which must have some definite quality, even if
it be inscrutable to men. The division is also natural
because it corresponds to a difference in the mode of
recognition, for though we shall see presently that man
acts as a single person, not as a bundle of faculties, it is
still roughly true to say that while wisdom and power
are recognized by intellect and understanding, rightness
and goodness are known by conscience and feeling.
Moreover, wisdom and power refer more specially to
God's work in the world, rightness and goodness to his
dealings with men, so that the former correspond to the
causal and teleological argument from the structure of
the physical universe, the latter to the ontological and
moral argument from the constitution of man.

It is argued by some that however great the wisdom
and power that work in the physical universe, they may
still be finite if the universe itself is finite. Perhaps
they may, though we cannot be sure that an infinite
power might not prefer the infinite elaboration of a

42 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

finite universe to the making of an infinite one ; and
such infinite elaboration is now more than ever suggested
to us by the instability of the atom. At all events, the
objection is not worth much, though it is Kant's objec-
tion. Our sidereal universe does appear to be finite,
unless the rays of light are either absorbed in space —
which so far as we know is most unlikely, or stopped
by screens of nebulous matter — which may be possible.
Dark stars are hardly worth considering, for they
could not occult many bright stars without such
prodigious excess of numbers (at least thousands to
one) as would shew itself in other ways. With these
reserves we certainly seem at some points to see clear
through the system to the voids of space beyond, and
can even form some idea of the centuries that light
itself would take to reach the distant border

Where frontier suns fling out their useless light.

But then say some from the other side. If the
sidereal universe is finite, it cannot be the whole
universe. Perhaps it is not. Space may be fuller
than we know. The boundless ether may not be the
barren desert which it seems. The everlasting burnings
of the giant stars may teem with life, though no such
life as ours. There may, for aught we know, be greater
galaxies than ours for ever sunk in gulfs of space com-
pared with which the distance of the farthest star is but
a span. It may be that all this and more than this
will meet our eyes whenever the veil of mortal sense
is lifted. But let us leave these imaginations, and be
content to take the universe as we find it. Consider

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 43

fii'st in its greatness the wisdom and power which orders
the movements of stars and planets, then in its delicacy
that which pencils the flowers and scatters the feathery
crystals of the snow. Assuming ex liypothesi that it is
wisdom and power, can we safely deny that such wisdom
and power as this would be able to do anything what-
ever which can be done by infinite wisdom and power ?
Action and reaction are equal in mechanics ; but while
reaction measures the power put forth, the power put
forth is not necessarily the whole power with personal
agents as it is with physical forces. If we see a man
throw a stone twenty yards, we do not straightway
take for granted that he could not have thrown it
thirty. So, if we assume that the power which has
made myriads of stars could not have made myriads
more, we take for granted that it is a physical force and
not a personal agent. On the common conception of
space and time as infinite we must allow that, if the
universe is limited, the power behind it is self-limited,
for the unity of things forbids us to suppose it limited
by some necessity greater than itself. In that case we
must set down to wisdom and power greater than any
assignable wisdom and power the manifestation of in-
definite wisdom and power that is made to us in the
physical universe ; and this surely is the definition of
infinite wisdom and power in terms of quantity. If, on
the other hand, space and time are ideal, infinity becomes
a question of quality, and these considerations of quantity
have nothing to do with the matter.

But the idea of right seems infinite even in ourselves.
It is a higher and more godlike thing than power.

44 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

however great. It is not conditioned like physical
things by space and time. That which under given
circumstances is right here and now for us must also
be right always and everywhere, and for every being
who has a sense of right like ours. That sense has all
the aspect of a power of a higher order, which only con-
descends to things of space and time when particular
decisions have to be declared. In this independence of
space and time rather than in barren extension over
them lies the true conception of the infinite. No being
of finite rightness could have given men in that idea
the potency and promise of what would infinitely surpass
himself. If the gods went their way and were satisfied,
and the beasts went their way and were satisfied, the
unrest of man can only mean that he is not rightly
related to his present life. With the gods the ideal
was supposed to be actual : with the beasts the actual
is ideal, or easily may be : with man alone the two are
parted elements which he is ever seeking to recombine.
Hence the divine unrest which shews that here we have
no continuing city, and drives us to seek for that which
is to come — for civilized man has learned under Christian
influences to put the timeless ideal in the future tense.
Were man only a beast, he would go the way of the
beasts and be satisfied : but being a beast, he is also
something more than a beast ; and that something
whereby he differs from the beasts, belonging of necessity
to a higher order, can be nothing else than some such
an element of the divine as is theologically called the
image of God.

We will not for the present pursue this further than

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 45

to indicate some important consequences. If it be
granted that the beasts have no knowledge of things
divine, man's knowledge must be given by this divine
element in which he differs from them. If there be
gods, they must be in relation to man — or indeed he
could not even imagine their existence ; and if there
be one God, he must be the archetype of man, so that
{pace Xenophanes and some of the moderns) anthro-
pomorphic ideas may be sound, provided they idealize
the best in man and not the worst. Thus, however
God's Tightness and goodness may excel ours in degree,
it must be the same in kind. Infinite goodness must
be of the same nature as our finite goodness if we are
to recognize it as goodness at all, and the infinite Person
who is above the imperfections of personality in us must
stand in moral relations to ourselves, and therefore to
all finite being that is or can be known to us.

The facts which concern us in our investigation cover
the whole range of human knowledge, for every part of
it is full of them. Let us look first at the physical
universe. We see before us a system vast indeed
beyond imagination, but, as we have reason to believe,
not strictly infinite. And if it is not strictly infinite,
the law of the radiation of heat would seem to shew that
it is neither eternal in the past nor in anything like its
present state eternal in the future. The discovery of
radium shews indeed that the sun may have unsuspected
sources of heat; but the fact remains, that any finite
quantity of heat, however great, must be radiated into
space within a finite time.

The system seems everywhere composed of much the

46 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

same chemical " elements," whatever may prove to be
the real nature of such elements. The meteorites bring
us from the depths of space no elements otherwise
unknown to us, though sometimes they come in com-
binations not found on the surface of the earth. The
spectrum of Arcturus differs little from that of the sun ;
and though other stars differ more, and the proportions
of the elements may vary from star to star, and even
from planet to planet, still the list of those we find
is pretty much the same throughout. Moreover, the
properties of matter seem always and everywhere the
same. The raindrops and the sand-ripples of Paleozoic
times are just like those of yesterday ; and even in the
furthest stars the phenomena of light and gravitation,
so far as we can trace them, are exactly the same as
here. We find no exception. The hemlock did not
refuse to poison Socrates, or the cross to do its work on
Jesus of Nazareth. Wherever we have found certain
things following such and such conditions, we have so
constantly found them following again what seem to be
the same conditions, that we assume — what we cannot
demonstrate — that they always will follow. We assume,
for instance, that the sun which rose to-day will rise
to-morrow, and that as A performed a chemical experi-
ment yesterday, so B will be able to do it to-day.

Such an assumption — such a creation of faith — is
called a law of nature. But here we must note the
meaning of our words. Nature in this connexion is the
universe of physical phenomena in their sequence, but
without regard to causes not physical. Thus it includes
all physical phenomena in any way connected with will,

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 47

but not the will itself. In a wider sense all personal
action, or more generally all that exists, belongs to
nature and is natural. We shall find the importance
of this presently ; but meanwhile we shall find it
convenient to retain what seems now the prevailing use
of the word, defining nature so as to make it co-extensive
with science, which deals with sequences only, and
reserving all beyond for philosophy, which deals with
causes also. Thus nature will not be the sum of things,
except for one who maintains that phenomena have no
true causes at all.

The word laiu needs attention too, for a law of nature
is not like a law divine or human, " a general command
issued by a superior, and enforced by a sanction." It
is not even " a rule of action," unless we go outside
science to assume some person acting. If such a law
be also a divine law, the man of science as such has
nothing to do with the fact : and if he chooses to
discuss the question, his scientific knowledge gives him
no right to pronounce on it as an expert. When he
speaks of law he means only that, so far as our experi-
ence goes, a phenomenon b has always followed a
phenomenon a, and therefore always will follow it.
Put more shortly, though not quite accurately, the same
" causes " will always have the same effects. This
principle of the uniformity of natural law is taken, and
rightly taken, as one of the fundamental postulates of
science. Its general truth is, of course, beyond dispute ;
but as regards its meaning, there are some things to
notice.

In the first place, it is matter of faith, not matter of

48 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

knowledge, that b will follow ; for the fact is of the
future, and the future cannot be known before it comes
to pass. However strongly and well grounded our
belief, say that the sun will rise to-morrow, still it is
only a belief. It is not knowledge, as we have know-
ledge that the sun rose to-day. In fact, the conclusion.
Therefore b will follow, is utterly illogical, for we have
no right to draw it on an induction limited to past
experience, and therefore confessedly incomplete. We
shall be stating a fact of our own experience if, instead
of therefore b will follow, we say therefore we believe
that b will follow ; but now the phantom of logical
reasoning is gone. The fact that b has followed a
thousand times before is not logical proof that it will
follow again ; only, we believe it will. If M is a duke,
this is not logical proof that he will not pick my
pocket ; only, I believe he will not. And if we answer
that while it is physically possible for a duke to be a
pickpocket, it is not physically possible for anything
but b to follow a, we are begging the question. We
may say that b has followed before, or that we believe
it will follow again ; but if we say that it must follow,
we say what needs to be proved, and has never yet
been proved. Our belief on incomplete inductions,
that what has followed before will follow again, is not
a conclusion from reasoning, but an instinct born with
us, as much infantile as scientific. If experience
confirms it, experience does not originate it.^

^ It is to be noted here that "scientific" verification is only one form of
proof that a tiling has come to pass. Ordinary testimony may be equally
conclusive. It would not be unscientific to say, The experience has not

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 49

The next thing to notice is that it is not quite
accurate to say that a is followed by b, for it is supposed
that parts of the phenomenon a have no influence, and
might be different. Thus it does not matter whether
A or B performs the experiment, provided they do the
same things. But the fact that A performed it and not
B is a part of the phenomenon a ; and if it is rightly
set aside along with many other things as irrelevant,
the fact remains that the scientific " cause " is not the
whole phenomenon a, but a selection from it supposed
to contain all the facts which influence the scientific
effect. Similarly the scientific effect is not the whole
phenomenon b, but a selection from it supposed to
contain all the facts influenced by the scientific " cause."
In both cases, then, everything depends on the inclusion
of all the relevant facts in the selection made. And
though the risk of error may commonly be very small,
we cannot safely take for granted that it may always
be neglected. There is a question of selection here, and
even scientific selection is not infallible.

But if the facts are rightly selected, there is room
even then for mistake. There is always the possibility
that a phenomenon ai, which we have not fully distin-
guished from a, will be followed by something different
— as in fact happens at every discovery. And again,
we may miss the distinction of a^ from a by failing to
notice the difference of an effect bi from the b we
expected. In that case we have missed a discovery
which remains open for our successors.

been repeated, and perhaps cannot now be repeated ; but A is a good
witness, and there is no reason to doubt his report of it.
VOL. I. — 4

50 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

It must also be noted that though the uniformity of
natural law is a sufficient postulate for science, which
deals only with sequences, it is not sufficient for
philosophy, which deals also with causes. In special
studies we assume the results of other studies. Thus
the geologist assumes the results of the chemist, and the
historian those of the geographer, so far as he requires
them. But philosophy, which deals with the sum total
of things, has no right to take a postulate as final when
we can get behind it. Now it is agreed on all hands —
even the Atheist will hardly deny it — that there is a
power of some sort behincl the uniformity observed in
nature. This uniformity must be the outcome of such
power, so that the final postulate must be that this
power is of a sort which justifies our assumption that
Nature is uniform. It is not enough to say that such
power works uniformly, for this merely repeats the first
assumption, and makes no link with the future. The
only sufficient postulate is that such power is perfectly
good and perfectly trustworthy. On no other can we be
reasonably sure that natural law is uniform, much less
that evolution will be upward, or even that the universe
will not vanish into chaos to-morrow morning.

Now, if the uniformity of natural law is not a
final assumption, but depends on another assumption
behind it, we have no right to take it as finally true
till we have examined it in the light of our truly final
postulate. YoY aught we see yet, it may prove to be
a close approximation, but not rigidly accurate. The
fact that we have never seen it broken does not prove
that it never has been broken, still less that it never will

FIRST CONSIDERATIONS 51

be broken. Though uniformity is evidently the rule, we
must know something of the power behind nature before
we can safely say for certain that there can be no
exception to the rule. Moreover, trustworthiness implies
personality, and a moral relation to ourselves ; and
though it may issue in uniform action, it is not bound
to uniform action in the same way as physical forces are
bound.

" Natural laws " are nothing more than observed
successions of phenomena ; and if they are never broken,
the reason is not that no power in the universe is able
to break them — for this is more than we know, but
that if they were broken we should cease to call them
laws. The idea of cause (as distinct from sequence), or
of constraining force in natural laws, is as foreign to
science as that of moral value in them. What we mean
by saying that the physical universe is governed by
general laws is that knowledge is impossible unless the
whole system is at least a rational unity, whatever else
it be. And this means that if Force be its moving
power, there must be one Force and no more ; and if
God, there must be one God and no more.

LECTURE III.

REVELATION IN NATURE.

But is it Force or God ? Is it a blind unconscious
power working mechanically, or is it a living Person
who can make his choice of ends and means ? Our
assumption of trustworthiness implies the latter ; but
we will ask again. If the heavens declared the glory of
God to them of old, one would think they must speak
in thunder to men like us, who look down vistas of
space and time our fathers never dreamed of. The
common things on which the Lord answered Job out of
the whirlwind — the sea and the morning, the wild goats
of the rock, the horse that mocketh at fear and the
eagle that beholdeth from afar — all these are no more
than the surface of a mighty structure of seeming power
and wisdom which grows more marvellous with every
year's discoveries. The old legends pale before the
transformations of the aphis or the Salpa, and the
wizardry of Michael Scott is as nothing beside the
marvels of the spectroscope. And there is also beauty
running through Nature, from the purple clouds of
evening to the iridescent colours that flash like jewels
from a beetle's wing case. The petals of a lily are
more gorgeous than the robes of Solomon ; and even the

.'>2

REVELATION IN NATURE 53

tiger's beauty is not more terrible than a spider's eyes,
gleaming out like four gigantic pearls.

At first sight all this would seem to confirm hundreds
of times over the old belief in a God whose handiwork
is earth and heaven. But science appears to shew that
if there be such a God, he works throughout by natural
laws. We do not find him creating new species, but
evolving them from the old — and evolution is "(1) a
continuous progressive change ; (2) according to certain
laws, of differentiation and others ; (3) by means of
resident forces." This is Le Conte's definition,^ from the
standpoint of a practical man of science ; and we accept
it subject to certain cautions. Continuous is not
necessarily opposed to anything but catastrophic change.
It does not imply either that the variations are indefinite
or that the apparent changes in one generation are
always very small. Progress is general progress of the
whole, not excluding regress or degeneration in any
number of sjDecies or individuals. Bcsident forces do
not exclude the action of forces outside the organism.
Some take it that indefinite and insensible variation is
the meaning of the word : our notice is simply that our
use of it must not be construed as admitting this.

Before we go further, it may be urged with some force
that the idea of progress assumes a directive power
guiding the process, for it is not implied in the mere
survival of the organisms best fitted each to its own
conditions. Such directive power may work either in the
conditions or in the organisms, or in both ; but in one or
the other it must work, if there is to be any progress.

' Le Conte, Ecolution.

54 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

But if we find evolution everywhere and creation
nowhere, some will ask whether evolution may not
suffice without creation. Need we assume a God if we
never find him acting ? If he will neither do good nor
do evil, how is he better than the idols in Isaiah ?
Darwin asked for a few simple germs of life to begin
with, and undertook from these to derive the whole
complex of life around us. Well, a man who begins
with an egg is not unlikely to finish with the bird that
was in it. But some of Darwin's successors announce
that they can do without the egg. Given matter and
force, they undertake to explain the universe as a purely
natural evolution which neither needs nor admits any
divine action whatever. Can they do it ?

The first thing to notice is that evolution only denotes
a method of action, and tells us nothing of the power
that acts, except that it acts in this way and not in that.
Being a scientific theory, it deals only with the succession
of events, and never reaches any true cause at all. We
are all agreed that there must be something to determine
the succession ; but if we ask whether that something is
Force or God, science has nothing to say. Evolution
leaves that question exactly where it was before ; so that
if the theory of design was not already overthrown by
Kant, neither is it now subverted by Darwin.

But let us make sure of our ground before we go
further. If any have argued from design, not simply to
an artificer, but directly to a creator, they have argued
hastily. The theory of evolution and the theory of
design, when both are rightly limited, cover exactly the
same ground. They both leave out the questions of

REVELATION IN NATURE 55

origin, and deal with processes of development ; but
while design is a theory of the guiding power, evolution
is a theory of its method of action. The one theory is
that design is the guiding power, whatever be its method
of action ; according to the other, evolution is the method
of action, whatever be the guiding power. They are quite
independent. If design is to be contradicted, we must
make necessity the guiding power ; if evolution, we must
show that the action is discontinuous.

Thus the theory of design is not that design originated
the system, but simply that design is working it now.
The question of origin lies further back, but only one
step further back. On one side we can all agree that
if design is not working the system now, we have no
evidence that it ever did work it. On the other, if
design is working it now, there seems no escape from the
conclusion that design originated it. No doubt design in
ourselves works on matter it did not originate ; but when
we come to the entire system, we must choose between
a creator and necessity. A mere artificer like ourselves
is unthinkable, for in that case the system, and therefore
the artificer who shapes it, must be necessary and eternal.
But then we get two first principles for a universe which
is one. Either, then, this artificer resolves into a necessary
system and forms a part of it, or else we must further
admit that he is its creator. The dilemma of design or
no-design is absolute, and there is no escape from it by
taking a blind instinct for the guiding power. If there
is no design in that instinct, we come back to necessity ;
if there is, it must reside in a being higher than the
animal which acts. In any ease it is clear that accord-

5G THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

ing as design or necessity is working the system now,
design or necessity must have originated it — if the
latter can be called an origin at all.

The theory of evolution in its nineteenth - century
form was suggested to its twin founders, Darwin and
Wallace, by the phenomena of biology, and is now
generally accepted as at any rate a general account of
the way in which living things have come into their
present forms. From biology it was extended to history,
in spite of the difference made by the free action of
men. Some would get rid of the difference by making
freedom illusory, so that in the end we have nothing
but blind forces as before. However, we need not
trouble ourselves about this quite yet. We may frankly
accept evolution, not as a cause, nor as a final theory,
but as 'a theory which gives a general though largely
metaphorical account of the processes by which organisms
have come into their present form. By calling it a
general account, we mean that though it describes a
large number of such processes, we cannot assume that
it describes all, or even that it completely describes any
of them. And in calling it largely metaphorical, we
mean that if the development of physical organisms be
strictly and properly called an evolution, that of social
organisms can only be so called by a metaphor — that
though there is likeness enough between the two pro-
cesses to justify our use of the word, we must not allow
such use to conceal important differences. Our scientific
friends often caution us not to let metaphors run away
with us, and we thankfully accept their warning.

Leaving questions of origin in abeyance for the

REVELATION IN NATURE 57

moment, we cannot allow that evolution fully describes
the method even of biological development. Supposing
it completely to explain the useful side of things by
natural selection and suchlike means — though even this
is more than can be said for certain — it breaks down on
their aesthetic side. Its failure here is as conspicuous
as its success before.

Sexual selection and guiding lines will not go far.
They explain few cases, and these but roughly and in
part : yet beauty seems as widespread in the world as
use; and when once the two are fairly separated the
theory is helpless. In the mineral world, at any rate,
there can be no thought of use to explain the beauty,
say of the colours revealed by polarized light. Yet
separated they must be, for even if beauty has occasional
uses, it is essentially the relation of forms, colours, and
sounds to a sense which seems independent of utility.
So at least it seems at present, though the matter will
have to be reconsidered whenever it can be shewn that
beauty commonly serves a purely useful end. It would
be a new light if such ends were found for the delicate
stipplings of a flower, the grace of a bird's flight, or the
splendour of a sunset.

Then again, in what sense has the development been
continuous ? Supposing the visible outcome continuous,
though even this is not always the fact,^ is it certain
that there never was any change in the underlying
forces ? Is it certain that no new force ever came in
under cover of the " chance variations," acting at first
insensibly, and afterwards more strongly, seeming first
' E.g. the case of the Ancon sheep.

58 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

no more than a difference of degree, and only later
shewing itself a difference of kind ? The possibility-
involves no visible breach of continuity ; so that, though
the question is purely scientific, science may never be
able to decide it. Perhaps, on the contrary, the germ
of the very highest was in the very lowest, so that oue
unbroken sweep of development covers all, and every-
thing but personal action comes by necessary sequence
from the original arrangement. Some of the old
" breaks," like that between animal and vegetable life,
are perhaps fairly bridged over ; and if that which
separates man from the anthropoids is more doubtful,
it is not because the body presents any difficulty, but
because his mental and spiritual characters are so unlike
all other products of evolution. In any case, even if
we assume matter to be eternal, there seem to be
" breaks " at the appearance of life and of conscience.
Now, if Force is the guiding power, any apparent breaks
must be illusory ; but if there be an evolving mind, the
question must be left open. In that case there may or
may not have been some visible discontinuity, though
the evidence is still very strong that there is a real
break between matter and life. It matters little for
our purpose. Religion rests not on any particular order
or method of past development, but on the fact of
present experience, that life invests matter, and con-
science life, with qualities of a different order from the
old. The absence of a break is no disproof of creative
action, and its presence is not more suggestive of design
to a careful thinker than the continuous development.
For the theory of evolution the difference may be ini-

REVELATION IN NATURE 59

portant ; for that of design it does not matter. Break or
no break, the guiding power must be either design
throughout or necessity throughout. The one thing
impossible is to divide it between the two.

We need no long discussion of the so-called chance
variations by which evolution is said to be carried on.
The phrase may pass, but only as a confession of
ignorance, not as an autitheistic assumption. Chance
means obscure causes, not no causes at all. Given the
throw, the toss of a halfpenny might be calculated as
accurately as the fall of a stone, if our analysis was
equal to the task. All that is known of the obscure
causes tends to shew that their action is as determinate
as that of better known causes. The variations are not
always even small. What is more, they seem to tend
in definite directions, not indiscriminately in all direc-
tions. This means that the directions of variation are
limited in number, so we cannot assume that one varia-
tion or another will fall in a given direction, unless there
be some directive power to guide it that way. It is
poetry, not science, which tells us that " Chance governs
all " ; and that was only in Chaos. In any case, the
fundamental postulate of science, that the physical
universe is an ordered whole and not a chaos, must put
such limits on " chance variations " as will justify us in
believing that the unknown part of it cannot be very
different from the known. If, for example, the known
part points to a God, the unknown cannot point to that
which the fool hath said in his heart. We may judge
by the known as a fair sample of the whole, without
fear that our main conclusions from it will ever

GO THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

be reversed by further knowledge of what is now
unknown.

Before we go further with the subject of design, let
ns once more clear the question. The appearance of
design in the world is undisputed. The man who tells
us that many things do not present that appearance
cannot seriously deny that many do. Nor can it well
be doubted in the face of history that the p^^imd facie
inference is from the appearance of design to its
reality. The Non-Theist will generally go so far with
us ; but then he joins issue. The primd facie inference,
he tells us, may have been very natural in the dark
ages ; but now that the light of science has arisen on
the world, we can explain the appearance of design more
reasonably by blind necessity than by the reality of
design. This is the question before us. We are not
asking now just whether the appearance of design is
enough of itself to demonstrate the existence of an
infinite Creator. Our question is simply whether we
can infer tlie reality of design from the admitted
appearance of design.

What suggests to us the idea of design is not the
bare fact that things are suitable to ends ; for if they
have properties there must be ends to which they are
suitable, so that such suitability is no more than the
outcome of those properties. A falling tree is very
suitable for killing a man ; but though we occasionally
hear of trees falling when men are passing, the event
does not suggest design to us, — at least not till we
have in some other way reached a high conception of
providence. A pistol shot is equally suitable for killing

REVELATION IN NATURE 61

the man ; and it suggests design, because we do not
hear of pistols procured and loaded and pointed and
fired without design — not perhaps to kill that man or
any other man, but at all events design to make them
capable of killing somebody. And all these four acts
are themselves trains of sequences of the sort which
suggests design, so that even if the pistol were pointed
and fired by accident we could not rule out the idea
of design unless we had reason to suppose that the
procuring and the loading also were accidental. So
other cases. What suggests design in the tiger is not
the simple fact that his teeth are suitable for eating
flesh, but the co-ordination of teeth and claws and
stomach and habits generally to a flesh diet. Other
cases are even more suggestive of design, because they
are more complicated and cover a wider field. Thus in
the response of the eye to light, or in the adaptation of
the sexes to each other, in the growth of unborn off-
spring and the provision made for it, we sum up far-
reaching trains of independent causes whose co-ordinatiou
is not easy to account for without the help of some
directive power.

True, design is only a theory, and therefore cannot
be demonstrated ; but neither can the rival theory of
necessity. Be the case for either what it may, it can
always be disputed by the man who takes no proof but
logical demonstration. So far the two theories are
precisely on a level, and there is nothing to decide
between them but the better or worse account we find
they give of the facts. Now the evidence of design is
cumulative. It is a fallacy to say that " the vastest

62 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

ranj^^e of design is of no greater validity than one
attested instance of it, so far as proof is concerned," for
the chief attestation of one instance lies precisely in the
range and variety of other instances. Each successive
case which suggests design makes it more credible that
the next is also a case of design. But the evidence for
necessity is not cumulative. If one class of cases can
be explained without recourse to design, no presumption
arises that a different class can be so explained. Design
covers all the cases with a single theory ; necessity has
to be fitted afresh (like the Ptolemaic epicycles) to each
class of cases. It is like a parcel of boys all making
different and inconsistent excuses for the simple fact
that they were found in the wrong place.

The theory of design in its older form rested chiefly
on sundry special adaptations supposed to be separately
planned. But now that these can be explained — at
least immediately — as the necessary results of natural
" laws " which cannot be supposed to design anything
at all, design is so far excluded. But we still have the
" laws " themselves to deal with ; and these are much
greater and more complicated matters than the isolated
adaptations, for they involve the whole structure and
history of the universe in all its parts, both small and
great, in the whole range of space from one end of the
sidereal system to the other, and in the whole expanse
of time from the dim beginnings of the present order
of things to the final equilibrium of heat in which light
and life — such life as ours is now — may be doomed to
perish. We see no longer a multitude of separate
adaptations accounted for by separate acts of design.

REVELATION IN NATURE 63

but one vast organic whole evolving like a thing of life,
and seeming to need no less than eternal power and
divinity to plot out the evolution, to work the " laws "
that cannot work themselves, and to dovetail all the
parts in their infinite complexity into one consistent
whole. The question of design is only thrown back
from the particular adaptations to the general " laws."
By what general laws came it, for instance, in the dawn
of time, before this earth of ours was earth at all, that
the streams of star-dust rushing through space heaped
up the different chemical elements in the quantities and
also in the proportions needful to sustain such life as
since has lived on earth ? A little more or less of
carbon dioxide would plainly be a difference of life and
death to animals or plants ; and bromides instead of
chlorides would have made the ocean like the Dead Sea.
Or look again at the majestic development of life itself,
from its lowly beginnings on the waves of the warm
Archsean sea, slowly working upward from tiny sponges
and radiolarians to the tree-like ferns of the coal
measures and the colossal beasts of later ages ; till at
last in the fulness of time the world-wide evolution
converges from all quarters on the coming of its lord
and ruler, man. All this may be the work of blind
forces ; but is there nothing to guide them ? Is there
no intending will revealed, no increasing purpose running
through the ages ? In a word, can there be such
evolution without an evolving mind ? Is any other
theory even decently plausible ?

No doubt what has been and still is the general
answer of thinking men : and though an ancient and

64 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

imposing tradition may be mistaken, it ought not to be
renounced without serious reason. Now, what is there
to set against it ? We are all agreed that there is no
true causation in natural " law " ; so that if we are shut
up to this we have nothing but an endless series of
phenomena, and never reach a true originating cause at
all. But we do not get rid of the problem by stopping
here. Matter causes nothing at all ; force causes
nothing but motion, and cannot determine its own
direction. Therefore whatever problem of originating
and directing power arises from the present arrangement
of things arises equally from their arrangement in the
furthest past we can discern.

One true originating and directing cause, and only
one, is known to us in will. Our own will we know by
direct experience, and other wills we infer from outward
actions. Some would reduce even this to a mechanical
resultant of motives, meaning by motives the things,
whatever they be, which stir the will to deliberate
action. But deliberate choice as opposed to unreasoning
impulse implies a pause for deliberation ; and we know
as certainly as we know any scientific fact that in
deliberation we contribute from ourselves an irreducible
element which prevents the issue from being anything
like a mechanical resultant of those motives. We are
not rigid bodies moved in space according to dynamical
formulse, but living beings who can kick at the so-called
forces which seem to drive us, and are very much in the
habit of doing so, for it is only metaphorically that
motives can be likened to mechanical forces. Nor need
the decisive element therefore be caprice ; for though we

REVELATION IN NATURE 65*

are conscious of power to do anything whatever within
certain limits, a man in his right mind has some principle
or general aim, good or bad, to which he endeavours to
subject that power, so that a choice of motives in
particular cases resolves itself into a choice of means
for carrying out such principle or general aim.^ Such
a man, for instance, does not love money for its own sake,
but as a general means of getting what he wants, or
pleasure for its own sake, but as a means of realizing the
life he most desires. The desire must be in us before we
can even consider how it may be satisfied. So we choose
our plans, not according to some " strength " ascribed to
motives by a misleading metaphor, but simply as we
deem this or that course of action best suited to our
ultimate purpose.

The reality of freedom has been shortly put from
another point of view. There is such a thing as truth,
for otherwise the supposition that there is no truth
would itself be false ; there is such a thing as untruth,
for otherwise contradictory beliefs would be true ; and
the world is a rational system, for otherwise all thought
would be empty. Now necessity reduces every belief
to a necessary effect of past states of mind which have
nothing to do with truth and untruth. No means is left
for distinguishing them, and reason and science disappear
in idle speculation.

Yet again, if necessity were a fact it could not be a

final fact. As freedom implies an agent acting freely

so necessity implies an agent acting necessarily. If it

does not, no rational meaning seems possible for the

^ Hyslop, Elements of Ethics, ch, iv.
VOL. I. — 5

66 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

word, and it is no better than a hocus-pocus. Then
there must be a fact of some sort to decide that the
action shall be necessary and not free ; and this fact
remains for investigation. If that fact be necessity
again, the infinite regress opens out before us ; and
unless the chain is somewhere broken by a free agent,
we cannot have a true cause at all. The necessitarian
neither solves the problem nor frankly gives it up —
and science with it, but puts forward a solution which
turns all thought (including itself) into meaningless
fancy.

Like scientific "laws," the inference of design is an
induction based on incomplete knowledge of facts ; and
the only reasonable question is how far the theory de-
scribes facts. Now, as we saw just now, we do not
attach the idea to all facts without distinction, but only
to certain facts. Beyond the suitableness of things
to ends, there is the further problem of the co-
ordination of independent causes to a common end ; and
no question of design arises till we come to this. To
these facts, and only to these, we attach the idea of
design ; and we attach it by the same necessity of
thought which compels us to believe that there is design
in similar facts originated by ourselves. Or by others,
for wherever we see such co-ordination which is not
caused by our own will, we never hesitate to refer it
to some other will. No matter if the means employed
are themselves subordinate ends, or if the main end is
obscure, or if we cannot trace the co-ordination through
all parts of the apparent scheme. We are often con-
vinced that a man is working out a design, even when

REVELATION IN NATURE 67

we cannot guess what it is ; and evidence of desio-n in
some parts of a whole is no way invalidated by failure to
trace it in others.

Where the co-ordination seems to be the work of
other men, the inference of design is so forced on us that
no man in his right mind will deny it. If A goes to B's
office every day at a certain hour, I conclude at once
that he goes there for a purpose. I may have no idea
what that purpose is, or why C goes with him ; but I
do not therefore doubt that he has a purpose, and I
shovdd be thought insane if I did. Now, if the co-ordi-
nation, as in the cases we had before, seems to be the
work of some higher power, the inference of design is
equally forced on us ; and it holds the field till proof is
given that facts are inconsistent with it, or at least that
some other theory gives upon the whole as good a de-
scription of the facts, particularly including the illusion
— for illusion it will have to be — that the co-ordination
of means to ends implies design.

Notable differences may be pointed out between the
works of Nature and the works of man ; and some have
taken occasion from these to deny the likeness between
them. Thus Nature works inside her productions, and
forms them by growth ; whereas man works from the
outside, and by adding one part to another. Nature
also makes her living product reproduce itself, while
man must himself make a new machine. These and
others are important differences, though they are too
broadly stated. But we should beg the question if we
contrasted Nature's action as unconscious with man's
as deliberate. Tlie blind properties of things play

68 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

exactly the same part in both cases : whether design
underlies them both is just the question at issue.

But important as the real differences are, they seem
in no way to invalidate such evidence of design as there
may be. The point of comparison is the fact that
means are — no matter how — co-ordinated to ends in the
works of Nature as well as in those of man. The
inference of design rests on the fact, not on any partic-
ular circumstances of it, so that it remains unshaken
till either the fact is denied or proof is given that the
idea of design arises from particular circumstances found
only in the works of man. As the fact of co-ordination
is undisputed, we have only to ask on what grounds we
are forbidden to carry over the idea of design from the
works of man to the works of Nature.

There is nothing in the conception of design to limit
it to finite beings. Doubtless design on God's part must
differ from design of ours, but it is still design. Infinite
wisdom which sees all the conditions of the problem
may work very differently from the finite wisdom which
has to pick its way from step to step. It may move to
its end with unfailing certainty, but it will choose an
end and co-ordinate means to ends as finite wisdom does.
The alternative is that a perfect Being either cannot
design anything at all, or cannot work out a design by
law — which seems a strange idea of perfection.

The boldest attack on our argument is to say that
there is no true analogy except in another world evolving
like our own. We cannot grant this, for as between
design and necessity there is no reason to suppose that
another world would give us better evidence than our

REVELATION IN NATURE 69

own. If analogy is a likeness of relations, not of things,
it would rather seem that no amount of unlikeness
between things can disprove an alleged analogy, unless
it covers the particular point of comparison. Irrelevant
differences, however great, must go for nothing. If a
ship sails, we cannot deny that a bird " sails," unless
we dispute the likeness of the motion. The great differ-
ence that the bird is living and the ship is not goes
for nothing, because it does not touch the likeness
asserted.

We have already touched on the objection that we
cannot argue from finite facts to an infinite designer;
but here we may add that in any case infinity is
irrelevant to the theory of design. Man works by laws
that are fixed for him, which he cannot alter ; but if
God works, he works by laws he has fixed for himself,
which he will not alter. The comparison is not between
finite and infinite, but between one conditioned group
of works and another. Our theory simply argues from
co-ordination to design ; whether the designer be infinite
has nothing to do with the question. The only differ-
ence it makes is that he is limited by his own will, and
not by something else.

Another objection seems even more faulty — that we
may argue from design to an artificer who alters the
form of matter, but not to a creator who originates its
substance. Here it seems forgotten, first that this
concedes the artificer's design, then that the theory of
design is concerned with the working of the system, not
with its origin. It is suggested by facts ; and there can
be no facts till a system is working. Again, though our

70 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

argument stops at an artificer, there is a step gained
from which, as we have already seen, we are compelled
to go on to a creator. But this is a distinct line
of reasoning, for we shall be no longer arguing from
co-ordination to design, but from the existence of an
artificer to the unthinkableness of a mere artificer as
the highest power that has to do with matter. Besides
this, matter and form can only be separated in thought ;
in logical analysis, but not in fact. It was a crude
philosophy which gave us in transubstantiation matter
without form, and form without matter ; and it is a
crude philosophy which still sometimes speaks of Being
without attributes. Mind without thought, or Will
without object.

We are reminded again that unconscious co-ordination
is not design. True, there may be design, and there
may be unconsciousness of it; but not in the same
agent. Unconscious design is a contradiction in terms.
If an agent designs a thing, he must design it consciously ;
and if he acts unconsciously, his relation to it is pre-
cisely that of a stick or a stone which somebody else is
using. The phrase is misleading, for it introduces the
word design when it means only blind forces bringing
out the same results as might be brought out by a person
consciously designing. The admission of design is only
verbal. Our argument that co-ordination implies design
somewhere is no way weakened by proof that the
immediate agent acts unconsciously. If we may look
beyond an automaton to the design of a man who made
it, what hinders us from looking beyond Nature to the
design of One who is greater than Nature ?

REVELATION IN NATURE 71

Neither again does it seem true that we can see man's
design, but not Nature's, though it is very credible that
we never see the whole of Nature's design. Assuming
ex hypothesi that Nature co-ordinates means to ends as
well as men, we get two parallel series of similar facts ;
and if we can see what the design is in one, why cannot
we in the other ? If, however, all that is meant is that
while we see the whole of man's design we do not see
the whole of Nature's, our answer might be to question
whether we ever do see the whole even of man's design.
If we do not, the two cases are exactly on a footing.
In any case, however, there is no reason why imperfect
knowledge should not be true as far as it goes. Evi-
dence that Nature designed this or that end is no way
weakened by the certainty that Nature designed also
many other ends. The real bearing of the fact is not
that we have no right to infer design anywhere, but that
we cannot expect to see it everywhere. The design of a
system still evolving cannot be more than incompletely
known to us ; and we have no right to require that
every part of an uncompleted work should show its
relevance to the incompletely known design of the whole.
Every workman knows what fools we make of ourselves
if we find fault with the details of machinery before we
quite know what it is meant to do.

A strange idea which underlies a good deal of common
thought is that design is a quasi-physical cause which
ought to appear somewhere or other as a heterogeneous
link breaking the chain of purely physical sequences.
But this, we are told, is just what we never find in the
operations of Nature. The links are always purely

72 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

physical, the sequences always unbroken; and we have
no reason to suppose that if we could only trace them
back far enough a link of another sort would tie them
all up to the foot of Jupiter's chair. There is no room
for design.

This is excellent logic ; but it premises a false con-
ception of design. It proves too much. In our own
operations, where design is unquestioned, we have a
precisely similar chain of purely physical causes. There
is no single force we can put forth with design which
purely physical causes cannot put forth without design,
though always under limitations which nothing but
design can remove. But if the items can be explained
without design, it does not follow that the whole can be
so explained. Given stones, physical causes might make
a heap of them ; and no question of design arises till we
notice that the heap is on the top of a hill. Given
words, they must come in some order or other ; but if
that order makes sense we infer design, and sometimes
even if it does not. So with the opera,tions of Nature.
The physical causes form an unbroken series not includ-
ing design, and there is really nothing to suggest design
till we ask how they came to be arranged and co-
ordinated to ends ; and that is a question on which a
science of sequences can have nothing to say. If then
we set the question aside, or forbid it as Comte forbade
it, we can do very w^ell without design ; but then we
must give up all pretence of seriously facing facts.
Design is not a link in the chain of sequences, but a
directive power called in to account for their co-ordina-
tion to ends ; and if we cannot explain the cairn of

REVELATION IN NATURE 73

stones without desigu, neither can we explain without

design any natural product which seems to arise in a

similar way from the co-ordination of means to an end.

Upon the whole, I can find but two serious or at least

plausible objections ; and these do not really touch the

inference from the appearance of design to the reality of

design of some sort. The gist of them both is that even

if design w^ere proved it would be the wrong sort of

design. One of them begins by saying that the design

indicated (supposing any design indicated) is that of a

finite agent who finds difficulties in his way, and does

not always take the best means of overcoming them, and

this points to a God of limited wisdom or limited power,

— to polytheism perhaps or a dualism of good and evil,

or may be to a capricious God or a mere artificer, but

not to the one all-sovereign and unchanging God of

Theism. In a true creator's hands matter must be more

plastic than the potter's clay, for it has no properties

but those he has himself given it. Why then should

he struggle with difficulties which must be of his own

making, unless it be to display his skill in overcoming

them ? Why should he so often use indirect or clumsy

means ? Why indeed should he use any means at all,

to work out what he must be able to do with a word ?

If Theism be true, we must go back to the worthier

conception of the Psalmist —

He spake, and it was done :

He commanded, and it stood fast.^

To a certain distance the reply is easy. A divine
knowledge may be needed for a full answer ; but a divine

^ Ps. xxxiii. 9.

74 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

knowledge is equally needed to justify the objection at
all. Unless we know all the ends in view, the objection
falls to the ground at once ; and this is a large assump-
tion. Perhaps the immediate end is clear, and even the
final end may be visible ; but if we cannot be sure that
we know all the intermediate and subsidiary ends, our
ignorance invalidates all criticism of the means employed.
We are more or less competent judges (and there is no
irreverance in judging) whether there is design, whether
such and such is the immediate end, and whether this or
that is a good means of reaching it ; but we cannot judge
of adaptation to unknown further ends. In our own
experience we often find that a short cut to an end is
a long way round to something further. Meanwhile it
might be well if we were sometimes more modest in
judging even of the immediate end. The imperfections
of our senses, for example, are fair evidence that there
was no design to give us more perfect senses ; but they
are not evidence that there was no design to give us our
present senses. The fact of design is one thing, the
limit of the design quite another ; unless it be main-
tained that a limited end cannot under any circumstances
be designed by such a God as Theism supposes ; or, in
other words, that he cannot create finite things. Perhaps,
indeed, it is as well for us that our eyes are neither
telescopes nor microscopes, and that our ears are not
long enough to hear everything our friends may say of us.
It must be further considered that design implies
choice, that choice implies limitation to one line of
action out of sundry, and that the limitation is not
removed if the choice is determined by infinite wisdom.

REVELATION IN NATURE 75

If things created are finite, they must have definite
properties and relations ; and if these are laid down by
infinite wisdom, then infinite power (not being unwisdom)
will be as effectually limited by them as if it were
physically unable to get beyond them. If an infinite
Being is pleased to work out a design, he must work it
out subject to the properties he has given to things, so
that he may have to use other and more cumbrous
means than he would if things had such other properties
as he would have given them if his one purpose had
been to reach by the shortest way the one end we
ourselves happen to be thinking of.

One perhaps of these further ends is not beyond our
comprehension. Let us take a hint from the satirical
suggestion that circuitous means can only be used " to
display his skill in overcoming difficulties." Is that
quite true ? Supposing difficulties overcome, is it
certain that nothing but skill would be shown ? Some
say that he is a God of patience (fiuKpoOvfiia) working
by method, and preferring circuitous means to the short
cut of breaking down the perverse will of man. Now,
if the world is a revelation, as on any theistic theory it
must be, such a character ought to shew itself. And
how could it shew itself if he were bound always to
make straight for the immediate object ?

This may suffice to show that the objection rests on
assumptions we have no right to make ; though its
rashness might be further shewn by other consider-
ations. For instance, have we not reason to believe
that the separation of means and ends which is a
necessity of thought for us can have no place in an

76 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

infinite mind ? However, if science is right in pointing
to man as the goal of evohition, and if certain rehgions
are right in teaching — what science, not being
omniscience, is not competent to deny — that the
natural order exists for and is subordinate to a spiritual
order, we get a view which, if not free from difficulties,
is at any rate rational and moral, and perhaps involves
fewer difficulties than any other.

The greatest of these difficulties is the remaining
objection. It is said that if there is design at all, the
whole must be designed. We cannot pick and choose.
Evil in the world and sin in ourselves — evil physical
and evil moral — must be as much designed as any of
the beneficent adaptations preached by Theism. Yet if
God creates good and bad indiscriminately, the whole
case for design disappears. His action is exactly that
of some blind necessity, so that any theory of design
is superfluous.

To this we might demur, that co-ordination of means
to ends is still evidence for the existence of design, and
that evidence for the existence of design is not refuted
by evidence that the design is in some parts good and
in others bad. If this were the case, we might fairly
conclude that the design was not purely good, or that
it was not consistently carried out, or that it was crossed
by a conflicting design, possibly of another agent ; but
not that there was no design at all. The evidence that
there is design would stand exactly where it stood
before. So far as the objection to design goes, this
would be a valid answer ; but it is not one a Theist
can make. Even if he can demur to the conclusion.

REVELATION IN NATURE 77

he is bound also to dispute the premises, by maintaining
that facts are consistent with a design of perfect goodness.
The objection plainly raises the whole question of
evil, so that it cannot be answered here except in the
barest outline. Something, however, may be said at
once to shew that the difficulty is less formidable than
it looks. Physical evil is broadly that which is or may
be unpleasant to us or other animals. Now the design
alleged by Theists is not chiefly to prevent such un-
pleasantness, but to produce and to train moral persons ;
and till this design (and not another) is disproved no
objection can arise from the presence of physical evil
in the world. Moral evil is a harder question, for it
cannot be designed by the God of Theism. The answer,
to put it in the shortest form, is that as we trace back-
ward a train of sequences we come to a true origin
whenever we find a personal will. It is not merely
that we cannot get behind it, but that if freedom is
real we have come to something which so deflects,
arranges, and co-ordinates the physical sequences that
what goes before would not without this rearrangement
be followed by what comes after it. If then moral evil
or sin is our own act, our own will is a sufficient reason
for it, so that God's creation is not the sin, but the
freedom which made sin possible ; and this is at all
events a different thing. And since the idea of moral
beings includes their freedom, omnipotence itself could
no more make moral beings without freedom than a
square without sides. It would not be a difficulty, but
a contradiction in terms. This may suffice till we come
to the question whether sin is permanent.

78 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Upon the whole, if there is not design in the present
working of the physical universe, the mimicry of design
is so close, so general, so varied and so complicated, that
we are entitled to call for serious and cogent evidence
that it is no more than mimicry. And in this it will
not be enough to disprove the immediate action of
design in one or two cases, and then vaguely surmise
that design may be entirely dispensed with in all the
rest. It must be disproved either universally, or at
least so generally that the outstanding cases of apparent
design can fairly be treated as anomalies which a fuller
knowledge may be expected to clear up. The scientific
facts are hardly disputed : what is their philosophical
interpretation ? The 07ius prohandi seems to rest on
those who try to explain the admitted appearance of
design by the action — not simply of blind forces, for
that is agreed, but of blind forces with nothing but
blind necessity to guide them.

We have had to discuss the theory of design at some
length, because of its close connexion with the idea of
revelation. Were it true that there is no evidence of
design in the changes we see around us, no means of
revelation would be left, but an intuition given to
individuals. Such intuition might be certain to its
receiver ; but he could not convey his certainty to
others. To them it would be matter of testimony,
backed up it might be by the life of the witness. Such
life might shew conclusively the sincerity of his belief,
but we should have no outside facts to test its truth.
The historical argument of Paley's Evidences is unassail-
able till we take the ground that no amount of historical

REVELATION IN NATURE 79

evidence is enough to prove a miracle ; but it would not
have even a semblance of cogency if the facts deposed to
by the apostles had all been feelings limited to themselves,
and none of them events which anyone could investigate
at his pleasure. Even so, there might be a weighty
argument in the agreement of independent witnesses.
But if the intuition were universal in the sense that
everyone was fully conscious of it, there would be no
room for doubt ; and whether it was universal or not,
the proof of it might always be disputed if it could not
be put in relation to external facts. If it is impossible
to prove design by facts which might be verified by all,
it will not easily be proved by intuitions not given to
all, or at least disputed by some.

Now this means that the entire physical universe of
space and time is in its measure a revelation of God.
Some will answer that, being such a world as God was
pleased to make, it is a declaration of his will, but not
necessarily a revelation of his nature ; and this is a good
reply to those who go back to the mediaeval conception
of God (not yet extinct among us) as mere sovereign
power. It is valid also against the more or less deistic
teleology of the eighteenth century, which contemplated
a great and skilful engineer living somewhere far away
in heaven, who made the world a few thousand years
ago, set its clockwork going, and left it to itself, except
that every now and then he had to come back and do
with his own hand something his clockwork could not
do, which something we call a miracle. This theory
rests on a whole series of dualisms which we now see
to be false. For instance, design does not necessarily

80 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

imply an artificer working from outside and standing
in such arbitrary relation to his work that it need not
express anything more than his fancy at the moment.
If evolution points to a God at all, it points to a God
immanent in the world, however he may also transcend
it — immanent as a living and formative power, and
working as directly in the commonest of natural processes
as in the mightiest of marvels. A God who sometimes
and only sometimes works in it is unthinkable. Again,
if it is a rational world (and thought is meaningless
unless it is), it must be the expression, not of arbitrary
or irrational will, but of a rational will ; and this again
must be the divine nature, for the idea that the divine
will can be arbitrary is nothing else than the natural
man's confusion of freedom with caprice. Yet again,
we have another false dualism of infinite and finite.
God is not simply something other than the world, for
that which is infinite cannot be limited by the finite, as
if each had its proper place assigned it in some larger
whole including both. Such quasi-local distinctions are
absurd. The infinite can be limited by nothing but
itself. It must be the ground and explanation of the
finite, the element in which the finite lives and moves
and has its being, while the derived reality of the finite
makes it in its measure a true expression of the infinite
which lives and moves, but has not its being in it.

If then the physical universe is a true expression of
eternal power and divinity, it has a value inconsistent
with pantheistic or ascetic ^ forms of thought which

^ This formally contradicts Mr. Illingworth's dictum {Christian
Character, 60) that "asceticism is an essential ingredient in all true

REVELATION IN NATURE 81

make it the mere husk of the spiritual, or even its
worst enemy. If God saw all that he had made, we
cannot doubt that he found it very good, however it be
misused and marred by sin. The world may pass away,
and the fashion of it ; but so long as it remains, it is as
truly a divine message as any that could be spoken by
an angel flying in the midst of heaven. The spiritual
life is not the natural ; yet there is food as well as
poison for it in the world and the things of the world.
Vainly the corn of wheat would drink the water of the
rain of heaven, if it had not also power to take in
particles of matter from the earth around it. So too
the spiritual life must feed on the things of the world
around it, and be nourished by the relations of natural
life and of ordered society, without which no human
health can long endure. The Ascetic is like the
Positivist — he pours out the wine of life, and adores

human life " ; but I think our difference is only verbal. One man holds
that things of sense, especially the body, and most of all relations of
sex, are impure and dangerous, while another who believes that "every
creature of God is good " holds further that certain pleasures ought to be
abstained from under certain circumstances, or even permanently by certain
persons; and I do not think Mr. Illingworth distinguishes these two
motives less sharply than I do. But I submit that it is inconvenient and
misleading to mix up lines of conduct depending on such different motives
under the general term asceticism. As the second line of conduct cannot
I)e distinguished as Christian asceticism if it enters (as I fully grant it
does) into all true human life, I prefer to call the first line of conduct
asceticism, leaving the words austerity or self-disciiMne to describe tlie
second.

For examiile, the Puritan had reason (sufficient or not) for his dislike
of cards ; but that reason was not distrust of pleasure as such, if he was
quite ready for a game of bowls. Such a man may be austere, and his
self-discipline possibly mistaken ; but he is not ascetic.

The greater the confusion emphasized by Mr. Illingworth, the greater
the need of distinguishing radically diff"erent motives as clearly as we can.
VOL. I.— 6

82 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

the empty cup ; the Pantheist strips his deity of all the
relations of reality and worships, not indeed an idol, but
a meaningless word which he takes for the name that is
above every name.

Before we go further, let us glance back at the
conception of God suggested by the physical universe
or Nature. It may be summed up with St. Paul, as a
revelation of eternal power and divinity. That there is
a single force behind it, and that a force of indefinitely
great power, is hardly disputed. Men of science may
be Theists or Non-Theists, but we do not hear of Poly-
theists among them ; and they are generally agreed that
though there may be a case for a dualism of good and
evil, it is overborne by the strong evidence of unity in
Nature. If now the argument from design be accepted,
that force must be allowed will (which implies person-
ality) and indefinitely great power and intellect.
Whether these indefinites are strictly infinite is a
question which some will have left open, on the ground
that there is nothing in the physical universe to settle
it. We have seen that this argument is not worth
much ; but we may let it pass for the present. Not
so the question of eternity, for even if the world were
eternal in the sense of infinite past duration, its moving
force would have to be in the same sense eternal ; and
if the world have beginning or end, it must be the effect
of a cause which cannot be less than eternal, for even the
atheist will hardly suppose that in the beginning there
was nothing at all, so that nothing created something.

We see, then, revealed in Nature an eternal Person,
of indefinitely great power and intellect. But this is

REVELATION IN NATURE 83

plainly a most incomplete conception, which gives us
no idea of his real nature. Can we get no further ?
Some power and some intellect every living person
must have ; but his nature is not determined by the
amount he has of these. They are outside things —
only tools for use, however needful they may be. What
he is himself depends on the character of the will that
uses them. The man of pleasure does not cease to be
a man of pleasure merely because his health is broken,
and the gambler is not summarily reformed when he
has gambled everything away. On the other hand, the
charm of a loving nature is no way hindered by want
of a capacious intellect, and even the dying man can
give one last dumb sign tliat love is stronger than
death. Amounts of power and intellect are accidents
of men, not their real selves. So also must it be with
God. As definite power and intellect is not the self
of man, so neither can indefinite or even infinite power
and intellect be the self of God. They are conditions
of action, but not the will that acts. Given a will
that is divine in character : if that will w^ere to lay
aside from use on earth ^ all superhuman power and
intellect, it would remain as divine as ever. So far
as this goes, there is no difficulty at all in the Christian
doctrine of the Incarnation,

We must emphasize this — that the idea of God as
mere power is simply unmeaning. It is not even untrue,
but simply unmeaning. Power without will to set it
in motion is potential, not active power such as we see.

^ The limitation is needed to shut out a good many questions we need
not discuss here.

84 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

It is like the power stored in a piece of coal, which
can do nothing till it is put on the fire. God as mere
power is a subject without a predicate ; and though we
may sympathize with a lament that the predicate cannot
be found, it is hard to understand how the sentence can
be all the better for having no predicate.

If, then, we are to know anything of God, we shall
have to see something more than his eternal power and
divinity. What sort of a will is there behind ? Is it
a will for right or wrong, for love or hatred, or is it
simply neutral ? To our former questions Nature's
answer rang out sharp and clear ; but now it is confused
by a discordant undertone. There is indeed so much
to be said for a belief in her indifference, that it is not
wonderful if some have looked no further. As regards
right and w^rong, she works by general laws of a neutral
character, crushing saint and sinner alike the moment
they get in the way. In war she is on the side of the
biggest battalions, without regard to right and wrong ;
and in peace the vilest of sinners can use her laws as
effectually as the purest of saints. So far she seems
thoroughly indifferent ; but when we ask how these
neutral laws work out in practice, we find a decided
balance in favour of right. Thus right is a factor of
success in war, though it may be overcome by other
factors ; and virtue is a real factor of success in life,
though only one factor out of sundry. Still, it is only
a balance; and though it does upon the whole amount
to a declaration that Nature is on the side of right, it
is not a clear unhesitating declaration like that of the
eternal power and divinity.

REVELATION IN NATURE 85

So on the other score. One thing indeed is quite
plain— that God is very much the reverse of love, if
love is nothing more than good nature, such as is
shewn by giving children what harms them because
they like it. Yet much Christian and Antichristian
reasoning takes for granted that a loving God would
feed us this way, and wonders why he does not. Let
us clear the word of weakness, and imagine a love too
strong to waver in changing moods like ours, and too
true to spare us whatever stimulus or punishment may
be needed to urge us on to better things. Yet if we
now ask Nature again, her answer is nearly the same
as before. She still works by general laws ; and though
there is a decided balance in favour of her wish to
promote the happiness of her creatures, yet it is only a
balance which hardly resolves all doubts. In this case,
however, the evidence may be a little stronger ; for
though the inflexibility of law is akin to right, it seems
quite as much akin to the awful sternness of the
highest and truest love. It is not only no objection
to the belief of some that God is love, but the only
thing consistent with it ; for any variableness or shadow
of turning would be conclusive proof that he is some-
thing else.

No doubt you know Huxley's grand picture of
Nature playing chess with the youth. As he says,
she never overlooks a mistake ; but she is absolutely
just. To the winner the stakes are paid with over-
flowing liberality, while the unskilful player is check-
mated without haste and without remorse. " Without
haste and without remorse." Now look at a still

86 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

grander picture, coming down from those dread times of
tumult and confusion when the Assyrian London was
verging to her fall, and

The grim clans of tlie restless Mede

were gathering to their prey.

The Lord is slow to anger and great in power,
And will not at all acquit the wicked.

His way is in the whirlwind and in the storm ;
And the clouds are the dust of his feet.

Is it not the same portrait ? Both Huxley and the
prophet Nahum tell us how Nature has no forgiveness,
and both notice her strange delay to strike. Yet there
is a characteristic difference. Where Huxley tells us
that Nature checkmates without haste and without
remorse, Nahum says the Lord is slow to anger. May
not this be true ? The long delay is not uncommon :
may it not admit a possibility of something better ? On
the plane of Nature this is pure speculation : yet I see
nothing to forbid it. May there not be mercy some-
where after all ? Though Nature's laws roll onward in
their unrelenting sequences beyond the reach of mortal
ken, there may still be forgiveness in some higher
sphere ; and by forgiveness I mean no rolling back that
car of Juggernaut, as if the word of Nature could be
broken in the world of Nature, but the triumph over
it of the living spirit which exults in suffering and
laughs at death for love and right, serene and calm in
sure and certain hope to see and to share an everlasting
victory.

LECTURE ly.

REVELATION IN MAN.

Tkue, then, and indispensable as is the teaching of Nature,
we must not be surprised to find it imperfect and
obscure, for the physical universe is not the whole of
the known universe, or even the highest part of it.
Celsus was hardly justified even by the science of his
own time in maintaining that the frogs of the marsh
have as good right as men to say that the world was
made for them ; and in the light of modern science
any such language {pace Haeckel) is absurd. Though
we see that man is not physically very different from
the orang or the chimpanzee, we see also that he is not
only the de facto ruler of this present world, but the
crown and flower of the long development of past ages.
He is not only the highest point at present reached, but
the end of an entire cycle. So greatly has he changed
the face of the earth and subdued it, that no room is
left for the evolution of still higher forms of life, unless
it be from man himself. Such higher forms, if such
arise, will not be animals developed, but men improved.
No other line of advance is now possible, for he will
summarily cut short any animal development, say of the
gorilla, which may seem to endanger his supremacy. If

87

88 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

the central position given to him by the Ptolemaic
astronomy has been taken away from him, it seems
restored by the modern theory of evolution.

Science, then, is as emphatic as ever Scripture was,
in declaring that man is the final outcome of the physical
process — not simply as its latest phenomenon, but as
the final issue of the whole. It is profoundly un-
scientific to speak of his appearance as " a brief and
transitory episode in the history of one of the meanest
of the planets." And if man is the final issue, he must
also be the explanation, unless we give up reason
altogether by saying that there is no explanation.
Yet the explanation is manifestly not to be found on
his physical side, in which he hardly differs more from the
gorilla than the gorilla from the gibbon. So far he is
simply an animal like the rest, with substantially the
same structure, and the same instincts and passions.
He is really very little better than some of the other
beasts, till we take him on the side of spirit, in mind
and conscience. But there the difference is enormous.
If this be taken into account, he hardly differs less from
the gorilla than the gorilla differs from a stone. In
spirit is the only possible explanation of the whole ;
and this means generally that matter is to be interpreted
in terms of spirit, not spirit in terms of matter. Far
from giving support to a philosophy which sets aside
spirit as an unimportant collateral product of the
physical process, the history of the evolution distinctly
points to spirit as the completion of the physical process,
and therefore as its end and aim so far from the first.
More than this. If evolution is an upward process, and

REVELATION IN MAN 89

the production of spirit is the goal of the past cycle,
then the further development of spirit must be the
work of the present cycle, and the problems of the world
around us must be dealt with in the light of such
further development.

These conclusions are drawn from undisputed facts
of science ; and if rightly drawn, they are of the utmost
importance. The Materialists of the last generation
were so hopelessly beaten that their successors have had
to disown the name. Yet they hold no very different
position. Instead of making spirit as purely physical a
secretion as the bile, they tell us that spirit and matter
are the two sides of some undefined third thing ; only,
matter is the side which governs the other. Now, here
it is good for both parties that issue should be joined
on the right ground. The fact, if fact it be, that matter
and spirit are two sides of some unknown third thing, is
a fact of psychology with which religion has nothing to
do. So long as we do not obscure their actual difference,
their ultimate unity is quite consistent with religion.
Whether it is good psychology is another matter, which
we have no occasion to discuss. It is the other state-
ment, that spirit is at least comparatively unimportant,
which touches the vital interests of religion ; and this,
as we see, can be directly traversed on purely scientific
grounds.

Turning then to the spiritual nature of man, the first
thing we notice is the peculiar relation in which he
stands to the physical world. He is subject, indeed, to
all its " laws," like any other animal, and if he breaks
them pays the same penalty of natural consequences. But

90 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

he is not simply and unconditionally subject to the first
" law " that comes across him. He has a will to choose
ends, a mind to devise means, and some physical strength
to carry out his purposes. So he can dispense himself
from any of those " laws," if he can set another law to
counterwork it. He conquers Nature by obeying her.
One or another of her " laws " he always must obey ;
but he is often able to choose means of so co-ordinating
forces as to place himself under one of them rather thkn
another ; and the range of this choice is the limit — the
only limit — of his power over Nature. In this region
only his action is free. Beyond it he is no better than
the beasts ; but within it he is sovereign.

Now this limit is determined by his knowledge of the
" laws " in question, and of the forces behind them.
The savage has little knowledge, and therefore little
power ; the skilled chemist or engineer has much
knowledge, and therefore much power over Nature.
But it is the schoolboy's mistake to suppose that
knowledge is purely intellectual, as if the best intellect
secured the best knowledge as a matter of course. As
he grows wiser he comes to see first that knowledge is
chiefly gained by force of will to stick to work ; then
that force of will is chiefly given by the desire to know.
A man who is earnest enough will do a good deal with
an inferior intellect, while the cleverest will be stupid if
he has no interest in the matter.

The desire to know may perhaps be stirred in the
first instance by base motives ; but it is very certain
that motives wholly base will never carry a man through
the drudgery of serious study. Some undergraduate

REVELATION IN MAN 91

friends of mine protested base things ; but their delight
in solving a problem made me doubtful. No man can
get up the needful enthusiasm unless he knows something
of the charm of learning to know. Base motives are
pure and simple hindrances, and a very little admixture
of them is enough to obscure the meaning of our facts,
and to corrupt our results with errors of prejudice and
impatience. Even when truth is lighted on by accident,
th^ accident itself, like the discovery of Uranus, is
commonly the reward of patient work, and needs a
patient and truthful worker like Herschel to see its
importance. The same accident came to Lalande ; but
his impatience only threw away his discovery of Neptune.
In every department of knowledge the mistakes arise
more commonly from moral causes than from simple
defects of intellect.

Now the charm of the knowledge of Nature is our
discovery therein of reason and order corresponding to
our own ideas of reason and order. We never come to
an enchanted ground where there is no reason and
order ; and we are certain that we never shall. If
marvels be true, we are sure that they will fall into
their place in some wider scheme of reason and order.
We assvmie without proof that Nature is a structure
of reason and order ; and then we find that every new
fact we learn goes to confirm our assumption. We took
it as a working theory ; and each successive fact as we
come to know it helps to verify our theory. Science,
and even thought about Nature, would be impossible if
there were not that in Nature which speaks to us in
language our mind can understand. And that which

92 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

speaks to us in language our mind can understand
cannot be anytliing else than a kindred mind revealed
in Nature. Our true affinity and likeness to the power
immanent in Nature is the necessary postulate, not only
of religion, but of science, and even of thought itself.
Scientific knowledge would be impossible if we had no
true likeness and affinity to the mind which speaks to
us in the facts of the universe ; and thought itself would
be no more than idle fancy if all true human thought
were not the tracing of divine thought which has gone
before it.

Not every thought of men, but only true thought
echoes God's thought; and no child of sin is wholly
true. This does not mean that all men are liars, but
that untruth has many forms less gross than wilful
falsehood, so that hasty thinkers hardly recognize the
subtler shapes of it as untruth at all. A man may hate
lying like the gates of Hades, and yet be far from wholly
true. There may be just as much untruth in saying
truly as in saying falsely that we believe a thing. In
one of Hort's great sayings. Every thought which is base,
or vile, or selfish, is first of all untrue. So it must be,
for it is contrary to the order of things. If God is the
ideal of conscience, every base or vile thought is a denial of
him ; and if men are joined by mutual duties, every selfish
thought is a rebellion against the order of things. And
such thought is not only in itself untrue, but it hides
from us truth which we ought to see, truth which with
purer hearts we should see, truth which a better man
would see. Let there be no mistake here : no force of
intellect can get beyond the physical universe without

REVET.ATION IN MAN 98

more or less of this kiud of truth. There is uo sounder
philosophical doctrine than the old saying, Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God.

The appeal is therefore not to any one man's notion
of truth, which is always imperfect, but to truth as it
would appear to the ideal man, whose vision is unclouded
by base or vile or selfish thoughts. Such a view of
truth is for us like a moimtain range obscured by shift-
ing clouds. We get glimpses here and there, and with
patience and help from our companions we can put
them together pretty well. We all see some truth,
though no two men see exactly the same truth, or any
truth in exactly the same way, and no man is true
enough to see all the truth he ought to see. Still, we
are in the main able to judge whether what is laid before
us is true or false ; and every fragment of truth we see
for ourselves or receive from others is a fragment of
divine thought.

For our general result so far we find that while the
universe in all its parts is a revelation, all parts of it
are not in equal measure a revelation. Life reveals
more than matter, and conscience more than life. The
physical universe is voiceless of itself. The stars of
heaven circle round in silence, and all the glory of
the world of land and sea tells us nothing till
we lay our own mind alongside of Nature and question
her with loving diligence. We must leave our pride
behind us and become as little children, and listen as
children listen for her words, before she will sing us her
glorious epic of eternal power and divinity. Yet when
her song is sung and ended we are still unsatisfied.

94 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

With all her subtle witchery she has no message for us
in the face of death and misery. She is grand as Job,
and just as hopeless —

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down,

tliat it will sprout again,
And that the tender branch thereof will not cease.
But man dieth, and wasteth awaj- :
Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and wliere is he ?
Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake,
Nor be roused out of their sleep.

Whenever the thought crosses her mind —
If a man die, shall he live again?

she dismisses it like Job as a dream, and comes at last
to nothing better than Elihu's conclusion —

Behold, God is great, and we know him not.

All this we think very unsatisfying. We hoped better
things of Nature. Yet if the Lord were to answer us
out of the whirlwind, he might ask again —

Who is this that darkeneth counsel
By words without knowledge 1

Who is he that murmurs at Nature's ignorance, when
the knowledge is in himself ? If none but man can
draw an answer of any sort from Nature, then man
must himself take up her parable when it comes to
an end. To question her further is to seek the living
among the dead. Man has that in him which is above
Nature, and therefore he can go further. The evolution
which issued in man defines him as essentially spiiit,
however conditioned by matter, and marks out spirit
itself as something of a higher order than Nature.

REVELATION IN MAN 95

Mere intellect, as we have seen, is not the self of
man, but one of the tools he uses. The man himself is
the personality which uses the powers of body and mind
to give itself a final expression in will ; and the char-
acter of that will, and therefore of the man himself,
is determined by its relation to conscience. If that
relation is good, there is peace within him ; if not, the
man is divided against himself. As the former is plainly
the higher state, and the only one which allows free
development, it must be the state of the ideal man ; and
the ideal man must be a fuller revelation of God than the
imperfect man, theologically called a sinner, in whom
will and conscience are in perpetual strife.

If we now ask for a more precise description of the
excellence of the ideal man, we may be told that it
consists in the all-round development of all his capacities
to the utmost perfection consistent with the finiteness of
human nature. But this would make prudent self-
culture the rule of action, which is practically pure
selfishness. Supposing, however, the possibility of so
construing self-culture as to give a good account of our
duty to others, the excellence aimed at would mark not
simply the ideal man, but the ideal man under ideal
conditions ; for the utmost perfection possible in this
world falls far short of a perfection which might be very
possible if there were a better world. Here we have
but a finite time for our development, and evil circum-
stances are constantly compelling us to sacrifice the
lower capacities to the higher, and making it a hard
trial to avoid sacrificing the higher to the lower.
Culture is forgotten, and too often decency, when life

96 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

is reduced by dire necessity to a struggle for bare exist-
ence. But under the best of circumstances the different
capacities call for different modes of culture, so that the
development must always be one-sided. The statesman
cannot give his strength to learning, the student cannot
have the health of an athlete, and the athlete cannot
rival the deftness of a skilled mechanic. Every man
must choose his own way, and renounce all excellence
which can only be reached by choosing some other way.
Yet the statesman cannot do without some learning, and
the student will be sadly hampered without some share
of the athlete's abounding health. We cannot cultivate
even one of our capacities without some attention to the
rest ; far less can we develop them all at once to the
perfection theoretically possible for each of them taken
singly. We must compromise as best we can among
them, for no man can in the length of time allowed us
work out so vast a complex of discordant capacities.
Even Jesus of Nazareth was very far from perfection in
this sense of all-round development. His keen observa-
tion of Nature is no result of scientific study, his subtle
knowledge of man differs widely from the cleverness of
the man of the world, his grasp of history is very unlike
the historian's learning, and his fresh and vivid under-
standing of the Jewish scriptures has very little relation
to the conclusions of the critic or the archaeologist.

The objection to making this all-round development
of all our capacities the note of ideal perfection is not
that the thing cannot be done within our threescore
years and ten — for no ideal whatever can be reached
in this life, but that it cannot be done at all, because

REVELATION IN MAN 97

it implies a number of divergent and inconsistent aims.
It is the old fallacy of defining the whole by the sum
of its parts, as when the supreme good is made to be
the aggregate of particular goods, or utility is defined as
the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

We are on the wrong track if we take this definition
of the ideal man. After all, our capacities are only
tools to work with ; and though a good workman keeps
his tools in order, a good outfit does not necessarily
imply a good workman. Character, not capacity, is the
real man : and character is determined by the quality
of the will. As the will is good or bad, so is the man ;
and if the will were perfect, namely, in relation to given
circumstances, so would be the man. The quality of
the will is determined by the extent of its agreement
with conscience ; and the endeavour to make this agree-
ment perfect is at any rate a single self-consistent and
so far possible aim. The reason of its impossibility for
ourselves is not in outward circumstances which might
conceivably be mended in a better world, but simply in
that bias to sin which comes into the world with us, and
makes it a practical certainty that we shall do sin.
Thus we could imagine the aim carried out even in this
life, if we could imagine a man starting free from that
bias.

If then conscience is God speaking in us, as Nature
is God speaking to us, the ideal man in whom conscience
and will coincide will be a revelation of God ; and every
man will be a revelation of God so far as conscience and
will coincide in him. Moreover, the ideal man is not
only a revelation of God, but the highest revelation we
VOL. I. — 7

98 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

can have, for he is a true image of God exactly so far
as he is ideal. Lack of power, lack of knowledge, and
the rest of the limitations of finite existence cannot of
themselves pervert his will, and therefore cannot prevent
him from being, as an old writer puts it, partaker of a
divine nature. Doubtless there may be depths of deity
beyond our apprehension ; but if the character of the
divine will can be exactly expressed in terms of the
ideal man, such further attributes are as irrelevant as
power and knowledge. And if we can form no con-
ception of them, then conversely they can have no
relation to us, so that for us in this life they are non-
existent, whatever bearings they may have on other
beings or another life.

In conscience then, or more precisely in the person-
ality expressed in will, and most truly expressed in the
harmony of conscience and will, we shall find a power
that can take up the tale of revelation at the point
where Nature failed us. But conscience is of itself a
blank formula, whose constants have to be determined
before we can use it. Conscience will tell us to aim at
doing right in all cases ; but intellect must tell us what
is the right thing to do in a given case. The judge has
got his principles of law, but he cannot use them till a
concrete case is laid before him ; and if the case is
wrongly stated he may decide it wrong. But he is
more likely to find out the mistake. He may see that
such an argument is unsound, or such a precedent in-
applicable, or that the evidence of such a witness con-
tradicts ascertained facts. So conscience cannot act till
a concrete case arises, and may accept a wrong decision

REVELATION IN MAN 99

if intellect states the case amiss. Yet conscience can
often check the error at an earlier stage, for intellect
most commonly goes wrong through moral failure. In
any case, the right will goes a long w^ay to secure a
right decision, and is infinitely more important. The
natural results of error will be what they will be ; but
there is neither demerit in a purely intellectual mistake,
nor merit in a purely intellectual right belief. It was
a good philosophy which set up for models of orthodoxy
the devils who believe. Our mistakes are seldom purely
intellectual. A wrong temper is even more likely to
mislead us than careless observation : and when a logical
conclusion (as in the case of persecution) is plainly
immoral, no genuinely sincere man can fail to see that
there must be a mistake somewhere, even if he cannot
find it out.

Nevertheless it is the office of intellect to state the
case ; and the more faithfully intellect takes account of
conscience and feeling as well as of pure logic, the
greater will be its power not only to state the case
rightly, but to bring the will into harmony with con-
science. The gain is in power to know the truth, but
even more in power to do the truth, for it brings the
force of feeling in its highest form, the force of love,
into alliance with conscience. And love — the desire of
that which a man loves most of all things — is the
strongest force of human nature. The cold warnings
of intellect are disregarded, and even the majestic im-
perative of conscience is overborne. Outward power
may restrain a wayward passion for a time from action ;
but no mere power can prevent it from breaking out

100 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

again the moment the pressure is relaxed. Desire is
not to be overcome by force ; but it may be slowly
trained by patient effort to fix itself on a worthier
object. Such training is confessedly the hardest as well
as the noblest work of life ; and a power which can
accomplish it must be in harmony with human nature
throughout its range — and therefore divine, if ideal
human nature is a true image of God. The possibility
is given by the fact that man's true nature is good and
not evil ; the difficulty is caused by the further fact that
his actual nature is deeply stained with evil. His con-
science is dulled, his will enfeebled, his desire set on
delights of sense and self which are at their best un-
worthy to be his end and aim in life. Imperfect as the
training to better things must always be, its results are
often marvellous. As long as the great guiding forces
of human nature are at variance, the man wavers among
them, and serves neither God nor Mammon with a
perfect heart ; but their united power carries forward
the will, and lifts it to heights unhoped before. Then
at last the man is revealed to himself in a resistless
torrent of enthusiasm, with the loftiest of conscience
marking out his aims, the alertest of intellect settling
his means, and the glow of love suffusing all. Common
men look on with amazement. They looked for the
glitter of some such tinsel as their own ; and out before
them pours the blinding light of molten steel. Such
power is given to them that love goodness ; such
majesty is incarnate in the meanest of them that do the
truth with the undivided strength of heart and soul as
well as mind.

REVELATION IN MAN 101

Here is the secret of the knowledge of God. It
requires not uncommon capacities, but the whole range
of the common capacities of common men. If the entire
universe is the revelation, the whole man is needed to
receive it. We may miss it by misuse of our capacities ;
but we may also miss it by not using some of our
faculties at all. Take the man who pleads conscience
for trampling down intellect and charity together.
What he calls conscience is only some bad passion which
he assumes to be divine because it is not sensual. Take
the devotee who adores the Virgin, the Church, or some
other idol. Is not religion blind and worse than blind
when intellect is refused a voice in the matter, and often
common truth is tampered with ?

On the other side, we may pass over the profanum
vidgus of those who hear say that the search for God is
futile, and take it up as a parrot-cry without caring to
test its truth. Take a scientific student of a better sort.
He has acuteness and learning, diligence and candour.
His work is perfect of its kind, for all that intellect can
do is done. What then is lacking ? Just this : either
he looks to intellect only for what intellect alone cannot
give ; or else he gives up the problem as hopeless,
because he rightly sees that it cannot be solved by dint
of intellect. Feeling he looks on as " mere subjectivity " ;
and he guards himself against it as an intruder on
scientific processes and a disturber of scientific accuracy.
Such of course it is, if we so define science as to shut it
out. But the claim here made on behalf of feeling is
not that it shall in any way encroach on the sovereign
right of intellect to decide all questions of truth. Our

102 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

demand is only that intellect shall have regard to all the
facts of the case. The impressions of feeling are as
much facts as those of sense. They may not be so easy
to deal with, but there is no reason to suppose them less
trustworthy ; and at any rate they are facts, and we
cannot hope to get at the whole truth without taking
full account of them.

If the road of pure intellect is blocked, we must not
straightway take for granted that there is no other.
We are trifling, not investigating, unless we begin by
asking seriously what sort of thing a revelation would be
if there were one. As there can be no revelation except
of a person to a person, this at all events it must be, and
therefore a form of personal intercourse. Now all other
personal intercourse depends on sympathy, which in-
volves feeling. Indeed, it is not too much to say that
our knowledge of men is strictly measured by our
sympathy with them, for there is no getting at a man's
real self without loving sympathy. If so, we cannot
safely take for granted that feeling must be severely
laid aside when in the search for God we come to what
cannot be other than the highest form of personal inter-
course. It is only through feeling that we can reach
the best things of this life in childhood and marriage
and parentage, in patriotism and friendship, and the
lofty joys of willing service in all its forms. Is it surpris-
ing that we cannot scale the heights of heaven some
other way ?

It is no answer to say that feeling leads men into
terrible mistakes. So does conscience, for that matter,
and so does intellect, and for the same reason. We put

REVELATION IN MAN 103

asunder things which God hath joined, and lay on one
of them a burden which can only be borne by the three
together. Feeling in particular is like the city gate,
through which all comers pass. Anything may stir it,
from the stars of heaven to the yellow primrose, from
the noblest of thoughts to the basest : and the attraction
of a thing is in itself the same whether the idea be true
or false, or the conduct right or wrong. Stolen waters
have always been sweet. So if conscience and intellect
are not allowed to sift these attractions, feeling is left
at the mercy of unreasoning sense and prejudice. Con-
versely, intellect works with a minimum of feeling on
the ground of science, because there we never deal with
facts, but with abstractions we have made from them in
order to bring them within the range of our scientific
methods. It would work just as freely on imaginary
data, and might build up from them with faultless
reasoning a purely imaginary science. Given its data,
astrology might be just as logical as astronomy. Science
works by comparison, neglecting things supposed to be
unimportant for the purpose in hand, so that its results
on concrete things cannot be more than approximate.
Even astronomy can boast no more splendid triumph
than the Lunar Theory : yet it is no more than an approxi-
mation ; and it is only made possible by neglecting certain
factors of the case.

Feeling is at its lowest in scientific study, though even
there a man is not likely to go far unless his heart is in
the work. We need it more when we pass from facts
of matter to facts of mind, because there we come upon
the irreducible element of will. We say for certain

104 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

what a stone or a planet will do, because we take for
granted that we know all the forces acting ; but we
cannot say for certain what a dog will do, because a dog
has a will of his own. Still more is feeling needed to
understand a man, for his will is more complicated than
a dog's will. In fact, most of our practical mistakes in
dealing with men arise from want of sympathy to look
at things occasionally with their eyes as well as with
our own. Most of all shall we need sympathy for that
highest form of personal intercourse which the knowledge
of God must be. Thus if He is perfect goodness we
cannot know Him even in part unless we look at things
with eyes of goodness. To ignore feeling here is quite
as foolish as it would be to ignore intellect. It means
that, before asking whether we can have knowledge of
God or not, we make an assumption which cuts off all
possibility of such knowledge.

But the claim to shut out feeling, which is made in
the name of science, is made on general grounds of its
danger in all search for knowledge, not on any grounds
peculiar to the search for God ; so that it cannot be
limited to that particular search. Yet if we try it on
our next neighbour we come to a redudio ad ahsurdum.
We perceive sundry changes in things ; and, on the
strength of a more or less sympathetic comparison of
them with changes we know to be caused by ourselves,
we infer not only the existence but the character of a
living person more or less like ourselves. We have true
knowledge of him from the changes he causes. We
could not do this without sympathetic comparison : but
we do it. We pass, that is, " from the affirmation

REVELATION IN MAN 105

of analogous action to the affirmation of identical
quality." If there are any who do not see the
cogency of this logic, the answer is simple. They
cannot offer us an argument against it without admitting
it. If it is not valid, they cannot reason with us, for
they cannot have knowledge of any persons whatever :
and if it is vahd, it cannot be limited to our neighbour.
If some changes compel us to recognize the existence and
character of one person more or less like ourselves, there
is no evident reason why other changes should not as
legitimately compel us to recognize the existence of
another Person more or less like ourselves. And this is
an argument whose premiss — that the changes are like
changes of our own causing — cannot be reached without
feeling.

Some will reply shortly that we cannot argue from
finite to infinite. But this is not what we are doing
just now. We are arguing simply that if one set of
facts is evidence of a person A, another set may
similarly be evidence for a person B. Assuming the
general soundness of the argument, it is not invalidated
if the second set of facts further suggests that the second
Person is infinite. Infinity is not a thing whose
appearance puts an end to reasoning. It is not such
in mathematics. A proportion does not cease to hold
merely because the first ratio is of finite and the second
of infinite quantities. The only question is whether the
ratios are equal. So here : analogy is not of things, but
of relations. The only question is whether the second
set of facts suggests a person in the same way as the
first. If it does, the argument is valid. Whether such

106 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

person is finite or infinite is a further question which has
nothing to do with the one before us.

It appears, then, in general that feeling is an element
in all reasoned knowledge, and in particular that
knowledge of persons, and especially knowledge of God,
is impossible without it. Let us therefore look at it a
little closer.

There is usually more or less difficulty — except in the
case of infants — in drawing a clear line between instinct
and unconscious reasoning. On one side instinct is in
itself so rational that it looks like reasoning; on the
other, reasoning may be so quick that we mistake it for
instinct. The difficulty is only one of our reminders
that human nature is not a bundle of isolated faculties,
but an organic whole in which all faculties work
together. So far, however, as feeling can be separated
from reasoning, it would seem to be instinctive. In
most cases most things affect most men in much the
same way ; and the exceptions are often easily explained.
Suffering and danger are usually unpleasant ; but sober
duty or heroic courage or even reckless animalism may
disregard them. What is good food generally may be
loathsome to certain persons, or to any one in certain
states of health. Some people seem hardly to care how
many lies they tell ; and others will go into sentimental
raptures over some particularly base and treacherous
murder. But in saying on trifling matters that persons
have peculiarities, and in serious cases that they are
diseased in body or mind, we recognize the fact that
other feelings are the rule, and these exceptions. And
here it is w^orth notice that moral perversion which

REVELATION IN MAN 107

amounts to mental disease is very commonly little more
than excess of selfish vanity. On the other hand, we
have cases where feeling is modified or reversed by
conscious reasoning, in the astronomer's delight in the
eclipse which scares the savage, or in our resentment of
advances from an enemy which we should value from a
friend.

Now science has never fathomed instinct. We may
trace the evolution of the circumstances which call it
out, or of the bodily organs by which it works, or we may
study the results of its action and the part it plays in
life : but what it is in itself is more than we can even
guess. Some cases of it may possibly be explained as
" a survival of purposed action in past generations " ;
but in others (matters of sex for example) that purposed
action is not habitual enough to make its transmission
plausible, even if it be possible. And if it were, habit
itself is instinct, so that we should only explain one
difiiculty by another of the same kind. Instinct seems
a deeper mystery than intellect, and may be more nearly
connected with the final secret of life. It comes up
from unknown deeps ; and somehow it comes up true.
In special cases it may be misled by altered circum-
stances, so that it needs a certain amount of check from
reason ; but in ordinary cases it is true. It is true in
the birds that come down from the north on the wings
of the autumn winds, and return in the spring to the
bright summer of their arctic islands. It is true in the
helpless infant which clings to its mother's breast from
the first hour of its life. It is true in the sudden flash
of anger that wards off sudden violence. Is it not also

108 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

true in the sudden shock of horror that greets outrageous
wickedness done before the face of men ? Is it true in
animals, and only false in man ? and in man only when
we reach his higher nature ? Some will say that moral
feeling cannot be instinct, because there are men without
it. True ; and others have argued themselves out of it,
or drunk themselves out of it. But is it reasonable to
maintain that what is wanting in the savage or the
drunkard (why not add the idiot ?) is no part of human
nature ? If most men have that horror, and seem to
have it in proportion to their general soundness of mind,
we cannot help concluding that those who have it not
are wanting in something they ought to have.

Feeling is always in advance of thought, for the
moment it begins to be verified by thought it opens
out new lines for further thought, and gives us glimpses
of more than we can express in words. Even malice,
which is feeling too, though of the wrong sort, has every
now and then a touch of keen insight in the midst of
its colossal blunders. Now feeling always has something
of the character of a personal relation. Its most de-
veloped forms are personal relations ; and we feel some-
thing personal even in the impersonal forces of Nature.
Languages differ in plasticity to personification, but
primitive man usually personified natural forces, and
even now the poet constantly uses the language of per-
sonification, and the student himself can hardly avoid it.
It is natural to us. The man of science personifies the
Nature he loves, the Anglican his Church in spite of its
own Liturgy ; and each derives weakness as well as
power from the metaphors to which he subjects himself.

REVELATION IN MAN 109

If we cannot say what feeling is in itself, we know
pretty well how it affects us. Take its highest earthly
form. Love seems to rest on a recognition of likeness,
perhaps disguised by great differences. But likeness in
evil is a rope of sand, as thieves and traitors have found
in all ages. Even the physical attraction which is the
ground and support of marriage needs to be not indeed
ignored or suppressed, but transfigured by something of
a higher order. So we rise higher as the higher self is
revealed, till in the highest love we recognize through
all differences of circumstance and character somethinsr
akin to what is highest in ourselves. There is no vision
of joy like that of looking up to heights of truth and
goodness which tell us that other men have realized
ideals of our youth which we ourselves defiled and cast
aside. There is no such illumination of heart and soul
and mind at once as loving reverence for goodness in
our fellow men, no such call to lofty action as the
enthusiasm that kindles from another's burning zeal for
truth and mercy. Unless we sin the sin of sins by
turning away in bitter hatred from the vision of good-
ness, we cannot choose but obey the overpowering impulse
to find our true self in self-surrender to it. Personal
influence is the force that moves the world.

So far we have studied the conception, or as yet
rather the sources of revelation, very much as if each
of us was a solitary thinker with nothing to occupy him
but the philosophical investigation of Nature and himself.
But man is a social animal ; and of this fact we have
now to take more full account. Even the hermit who
tries to limit all feeling to the contemplation of God

110 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

cannot prevent it from also going forth towards men,
and continually tormenting him with memories of the
City of Destruction he left behind. However he may
hate his country and his kindred and his father's house,
he finds it hard work to forget them. But why should
he try to forget them ? asks the man that is clothed and
in his right mind. In all states of life which seem
natural and healthy a man's relations to others, and the
consequences arising from them, claim the larger part of
his thoughts and almost entirely determine his occupation.
Bread for himself is bread for his children, and work for
himself is work for others. In these relations therefore
his true self must be chiefly realized, so far as it is
realized at all. It follows that life is the highest study,
not philosophy, so that self-culture is no more than a
means, not an end in itself. Even the knowledge of
truth is debased if we make it a selfish pleasure, instead
of a help to do such work as lies before us. For his
own sake the individual must be subject to society,
though for society's own sake again the subjection must
not be complete, for under any form of government the
individual is a part of the society, and even the slave
influences it as much as the free man, though in a
different manner.

But if our highest work is to do truth, and the
knowledge of truth is no more than the means of doing
truth, it follows that life rather than philosophy or
science is the highest revelation ; and that feeling, which
governs our relations to others, is even more needed for
its recognition than the intellect which is supreme in
abstract studies. But here the case divides. Others

REVELATION IN MAN HI

have done truth in the past, or failed to do it, and we
ourselves are doing truth now, or failing to do it. Hence
the revelation of God which rises higher than Nature is
not single, but twofold. There is a revelation coming
back from the past, and a revelation unfolding in the
present — a revelation in history, and a revelation in
life.

If the lower revelation is incomplete, the higher
revelations are fragmentary. The beginnings of history
are lost, and the future is hidden ; the beginnings of life
are forgotten, and the end is not yet. Only by faith, by
trust in the reason and order of the universe, can we
feel sure that some far-off divine event will bring to a
worthy consummation the great development whose latest
issues on this earth of ours are history and life. So it
must be, unless Chaos rules ; but no purely intellectual
belief can make that hope the moving force in life it
ought to be if it is true. We cannot round off a philo-
sophical system on fragments like these ; nor is it need-
ful that we should. The lamp that leaves the distant
hills in darkness may be strong enough to shew us the
road before us.

Men in all ages have seen God in history, and some-
times more vividly than they cared to tell. Indeed, its
great catastrophes are as impressive as the earth's
volcanic outbursts, and have an individual character
which is less easily forgotten. The earthquake of Lisbon
stirred more doubts than all the deists ; but it is no
such epoch of human thought as the French Ee volution.
Its lasting effects will not compare with those of the
dreary Thirty Years' War, which exhausted the worst of

112 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

religious hatred, and compelled the nations henceforth
to do their fighting with some regard for humanity.
There were no more such horrors as the Spanish Fury
or the Sack of Magdeburg. Even scoffers are overawed
when some great empire crashes like a house of cards,
and the thoughts of men sway back to the belief of
oldeu times, Verily there are gods that judge in the
earth. France herself could see at the time the meaning
of Napoleon's fall, though afterward she made herself
a lying legend ; and few there are among us, of those
whose hairs are whitening now, who can look back un-
moved on the dread winter of the siege of Paris.

But the chief meaning of history, and its chief power
to suggest and shape the teachings of nature and life,
is not in the grand dramas where we seem to hear God
speaking straight from heaven. As the still small voice
was greater than the earthquake and the storm, so the
silent movements of history are greater than the great
catastrophes which reveal them to us. We seem to
wake of a sudden ; and lo ! the earth is changed. The
old landmark is gone, the old wisdom is confounded, the
good old custom is become a grievous wrong. When
Amos defies the priest of Bethel, or Luther dares the
wrath of Charles v, the meaning of the scene is not
simply that a brave man takes his life in his hand, but
that the undercurrent of history has so brought round
the thoughts of men that the issue on which he does it
is felt to be decisive. Hannibal at the gates of Eome
summed up the heroic tenacity of the old republic, and
Alaric the administrative and moral failure of the
Empire. Queen Elizabeth's defeat on the monopolies

REVELATION IN MAN 113

revealed a century's growth of the Commons of England ;
and the enthusiasm of the Tennis Court Oath proclaimed
it time that the rotten splendour of the old French
monarchy should cease from cumbering the earth. As
we drift in the darkness down the stream of time, with
the swirl of the torrent below and the roll of the thunder
above us, the great scenes of history are the flashes of
lightning that show us the banks of the river. They
may be gone in a moment ; but we know better where
we are.

In humdrum periods of history or in prosaic days
of disenchantment, the forces are silently gathering for
the next great conflict. From the exhausted fifteenth
century sprang the bursting life of the sixteenth, and
the ignoble eighteenth was followed by the mighty
struggles of the nineteenth. If Time is the greatest of
innovators, his touch is so gentle that we can hardly
trace its working, till some day the rough hand of man
tears away the veil and shows us the work already done.
History is the framework of all other teaching, and very
largely determines its character. Science made slow
progress in ancient times, because polytheism obscured
the unity of nature, and race and class antagonisms the
unity of mankind and of history. An atmosphere of
legend and imposture discouraged accurate observation,
pride of intellect preferred clever theories to prosaic
facts, and the worship of beauty tended to contempt of
all that was not aesthetic. Even the Greeks had uphill
work against these difficulties. Christianity prepared
the way for better things. Its doctrine of the unity of
God implies, and was seen to imply, unity in nature, in
VOL. I. — 8

114 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

history, in mankind, and in life ; its gospel of an incar-
nation consecrated nature in all its parts to something
higher than aesthetic interest ; and the historic truth
claimed for the revelation was a perpetual challenge to
closer and more accurate critical and scientific investi-
gation. But the advance of science was still delayed,
first by the educational and economic exhaustion of the
ancient world, then by the rudeness of the northern
nations, and then again by the arrogance of a Church
whose polytheistic atmosphere of legend and imposture
belied its claim to hold the keys of all truth ; and yet
for another century again by the clamour of the wars of
religion. It is not accidental that the great advance
began after the Peace of Westphalia, and became rapid
when something like settled peace returned to Europe
after Waterloo. Nor is it unnatural that, while the
research of the eighteenth century was coloured by the
more abstract sciences of mathematics and astronomy,
that of our own time takes its tone from the more
concrete study of biology. In the same way Greek
philosophy brought to the surface the conception of
universal duty, Eoman jurisprudence that of universal
law, while Christianity joined them both in Christ's
claim to sovereignty over thought and action alike. If
the early church preached the supremacy of conscience
as it had never been preached before, the Latin ages
taught powerfully the need of order, and the Reformation
broke in pieces an evil order to make room again for
truth and reason. Every age has some new teaching to
declare, but in any case it only comes to light in the
fulness of time, when the historical environment begins

REVELATION IN MAN 115

to make it possible. Thus the imperial conception of
God grew up with the Empire, and decayed with the
rise of modern nations, while the " carpenter theory "
had to wait for the advance of science, and is itself dis-
solving in the light of clearer knowledge. A universal
Church seemed needed to match the universal Empire ;
but an age of nations could dispense with it. So too
we shall find that the changes of religious thought in
the last half century spring quite as much from political
and social changes as from the working of scientific
ideas.

But how shall we venture to discuss the revelation
through life ? Such a revelation must lie chiefly in
those most intimate personal experiences which may not
be profaned by common curiosity, and cannot be fully
told to anyone. In our Founder's impressive words, The
prophet may tell his vision, but he cannot give his own
anointed eye. More than this, there is said to be in it
a mystery inscrutable even to the man who lives by it,
— a mystery known indeed, he tells us, with an intense
and vivid certainty to which all common knowledge is
no more than mist and twilight, yet in its depth un-
"measured and in its fulness inexhaustible. He will
sooner doubt the solid earth he treads on than the voice
that speaks to him through the changes and chances of
this mortal life. That voice has not only or even chiefly
to do with passionate intuitions and subconscious
perceptions, for it seems to sound as clearly and more
often in deliberate and reasoned conviction that this or
that is right or wrong, and must at every hazard be
done or left undone. But is it real after all ? We

116 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

have ample evidence to decide the question. Though we
cannot have the experience of others, we have their
testimony, and we can judge for ourselves of the results.
Even as an illusion, the belief has to be accounted for ;
and if it is an illusion, it is beyond comparison the
mightiest of human illusions. This illusion has been
the great nation-making, nation-binding, nation-breaking
power in history, the great guiding, lifting, transfiguring
power of common life. This illusion has not only nerved
men and even tender women to face a cross of shame
before the world, but given them the higher courage and
still higher patience needed for the obscure and hopeless
toil of continual failure in the work that seemed appointed
them. If the greatest force of history and life is illusion,
can we trust even the reasoning which professes to prove
it such ? Can we believe any longer in such a power of
reason and order working in the world as even science
requires, and cannot do without ?

Yet illusion lies very near. Like the pillar of cloud
which moved behind the camp of Israel, religion has a
side of cloud and darkness, as well as one of light. It
has inspired, or seemed to inspire, some of the vilest
deeds of history, from the abominations of the Amorites
downward to the organized falsehood of the Jesuits ad
majorem Dei gloriam. Yea, many a time have Moloch
and Belial been transformed into angels of light. No
marvel if truth and common decency have driven some
men to hate religion. Yet even these infernal cari-
catures of things divine are at one with the purest and
loftiest faith, so far as they declare the unearthly power
that lies in our relation to things unseen — a power

REVELATION IN MAN 117

before which when once its might is roused all common
passions fall away like cobwebs from a strong man's
limbs.

Moreover, all religions are agreed in the general aim
of maintaining and if need be restoring right relations
to unseen powers : they differ in having higher or lower
conceptions of these powers, and more or less rational
methods of worship. Given a Moloch, we know what
sort of sacrifices he wants ; given a Father in heaven,
he must be more ready to hear than we to pray. But
what business had men to believe in a Moloch at all ?
They were not without the natural feeling which revolts
at such sacrifices, but they stifled it in obedience to a
supposed divine command. Yet a true revelation, if such -r
there be, cannot be a mere command from outside. It
is the recognition of the divine without by the divine
within, and must therefore appeal for final verification
to our sense of truth and right, so that it is self-
convicted if it certainly contradicts them. If the
message came to me which seemed to come to Abraham,
no amount of evidence could prove it divine in the face
of the certainty grown up since Abraham's time, that
my son's life is not mine to sacrifice. So too if Jesus
of Nazareth literally meant a man to hate his father
and his mother, we should know that his inspiration
was not divine. Here is a clear test. It must be used
reasonably (which it is not always) but a professedly
divine message which will not stand it must be rejected.
If God is good, he cannot command what we see to be
evil ; and if he is not good, the case for revelation
disappears in the general break-up of thought.

118 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

But if the Moloch - worshippers took the wrong
method, it does not follow that their general aim was
either mistaken or futile. Mistake in some cases does
not prove illusion in all cases. Were a revelation quite
true, it could not fail to be grievously perverted by men
whose ideas of God were on a lower plane, for we
cannot safely take for granted that it must of necessity
be so clear that nobody can mistake its meaning, and
so threatening that nobody will venture wilfully to
disobey it. The right conclusion from the abominations
of Moloch and others is not a hasty condemnation of
all religion indiscriminately, but a caution against such
forms of it as may prove contrary to sound reason.
Meanwhile there is strong evidence that the belief in
communion with the unseen is not all illusion. Hardly
any belief which is not absolutely universal is confirmed
by so vast a convergence of sober testimony from those
who claim to know it by experience, and to speak of
that they know. The evidence is not limited to one
age of the world or one stage of civilization, one race
or nation, one form of religion, one rank in life, one
type of character or state of health. It seems fairly
spread over all periods of history, all stages of culture,
all diversities of individual training and position. It
takes a colour from everything that influences life and
character, yet seems always essentially the same. And
is not this cumulative evidence the surest proof of
objective reality ? Through the endless variations in
the accounts of it given by those who claim to know it
by experience, no fair-minded student can mistake its
general and normal tendency to an intense and vivid

REVELATION IN MAN 119

life of purity and kindliness. When this is not its out-
come, we always find reason to think that something
cankers it. Either the man's belief in it is unreal ; or
his methods are mistaken, as with the worshippers
of Moloch. Peace and joy seem as normal to it as
righteousness itself, and are seldom entirely wanting.
Thus though the gloom of mediseval religion well repre-
sented the grossness and disorder of feudal society, it
was not without its hope. Beyond the Dies irce rose
Jerusalem the golden.

Any attempt to explain so general a fact by partial
causes is plain trifling. No theory can be accepted
unless it finds causes rooted deep enough in human
nature to work through this immense variety of circum-
stances. Morbid conditions, for instance, are often found
in cases of religious as well as of scientific or literary
or any other sort of eminence ; and there may be some
vestiges of truth in the idea that eminence generally is
more or less allied to such conditions. In the main, I
should say the fact is otherwise ; but genius undoubtedly
calls for such industry and strain of nerve as will find
out any constitutional weakness. Often, indeed, it is
just physical weakness which suggests a line of action
where strength of will can win eminence in spite of
weakness. In some cases physical weakness may even
be an advantage, for there is no such vivid feeling as
that given to some of those who suffer, and there is no
true insight without feeling. But these are particular
considerations ; and morbid as distinct from vivid feeling
would seem rather a general hindrance to all eminence
than a special help to any particular sort of eminence.

120 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

If morbid conditions not unfrequently attend the
origin of religious conviction, their occurrence is natural
enough in a trying time of moral unrest. Imagine a
man brought face to face with the appalling fact he
never realized before, that God sees all his goings, and
sees them with displeasure ! Or imagine him persuaded
that God calls him to bear witness — and witness he
must — of some terrible truth which may cost him not
his life only, but the hatred of his country and his
nearest friends ! It is grim earnest, if anything in life
is earnest ; and morbid conditions are not unlikely to
accompany such a fearful strain of heart and soul and
mind till the man either settles down into the new
life, or falls back into the old. Further evidence is
needed to shew, first that morbid conditions originate
the new life, then that they sustain its later growth ;
and yet further evidence will still be needed to give
us reasonable assurance that this is commonly the fact,
before we can look on such conditions as more than a
partial and therefore insufficient cause. And there are
many cases where such a cause can hardly be suggested.
Of Jesus of Nazareth, who fills all Christian hearts, a
Gifford Lecturer must speak with some reserve; but
there is a tremendous dilemma there which will have
to be faced. Assuming that the stupendous claim
ascribed to him is false, one would think it must have
disordered his life with insanity if he made it himself,
and the accounts of his life if others invented it.
Later cases are plenty. John Wesley made some bad
mistakes ; but nobody can read his Diary or study
his political action without seeing in him one of the

REVELATION IN MAN 121

soundest and most sensible men of the eighteenth
century. If Newton and Faraday were not sound and
healthy minds, it may go hard with Darwin and Huxley.
If Butler and Lightfoot lived in a morbid state, Haeckel
and Karl Pearson may do well to make sure of their
own sanity. So likewise of countless common men, who
tell us that the vision is real, however doubt and carnal
fear may dim our eyes. We can rule out their evidence
if we start from the axiom that personal conviction of
religion is of itself morbid, but hardly in any other way :
and that way is begging the question.

No, gentlemen, now that we stand before the mightiest
experience of history and life, at least let our words be
sober and wary. It will not suffice for opponents to
tell us that our experience is not theirs, for they could
not remain opponents if it were. May not experience
be true which is not universal ? It is in science : why
not in religion ? If ours is true, we can explain why
they are not conscious of it as theirs ; but if it is false,
they cannot explain why we are assured that we know
it to be ours. We have found no initial impossibility
in the belief that there is a divine revelation in the
ordering and guidance of our life, and we have seen
that it cannot be accounted for by morbid conditions.
What is it then ? An enthusiasm no doubt — we can
agree so far — and often a white-hot enthusiasm. But
what is its quality ? Take it in its best and purest
form, as you are bound to do, and judge for yourselves ;
but judge the righteous judgment. Survey first our
baser passions — envy, malice, cruelty — and tell us if
you can that the enthusiasm is of the earth earthy

t

122 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

which consumes them like a furnace blast. Then call
up the bright ideals of truth and purity and gentleness
and love unfeigned, and tell us again that there is
nothing divine in the enthusiasm which flowers aloft,
like the flower in the sunless cavern, to their marvellous
light. Is it all no better than the appetites of beasts ?
If so indeed it be, let us take Chance for our Father in
heaven, and resign ourselves for ever to the reign of
Chaos and Ancient Night.

LECTURE V.

GENEEAL CONSIDERATIONS.

We have now come to a point from which it may be
well to look back once again on the results we have
reached. We found, then, a lower revelation on the
existence and structure of the physical universe, and a
higher in the spiritual nature of man, in his historical
development from the past, and in the personal relations
and experiences of life. We assumed as a working
hypothesis that the power behind Nature is rational
and good, because we cannot otherwise reason at all ;
and each step of our investigation confirmed the truth
of our assumption. The revelation in the physical
universe assured us of the unity of God, of his eternity,
and of power and wisdom greater that any assignable
power and wisdom ; but it left open the practical
question, whether the divine nature is wholly right
and good. Such it seemed to be, but not so plainly as
to leave no room for doubt. It is not till we question
the spiritual nature of man that we reach clear evidence
of infinite rightness and infinite power and wisdom,
though it still remained a venture of faith to believe

123

124 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

in an infinite goodness which is only seen in part. The
revelation in history confirms all this on a large scale,
but (apart from any special revelation there may be)
it does not seem to add much new matter. The
question of goodness in particular becomes clearer ; but
is by no means finally settled in the sense that it
becomes matter of demonstration. First principles
must always remain assumptions, however they may be
confirmed by facts. Even the revelation of life, which
does seem decisive, is decisive only for those who
recognize it in life ; so that this question of infinite
goodness remains open for others. Many things
indicate that God is good; but on the easy-going theory
of goodness it can always be replied that some things
point another way. Many have borne witness of that
they know ; but it is always possible to insist on seeing
and handling for ourselves. We have reason for our
trust, cumulative reason convergent from the whole
realm of thought; but we cannot demonstrate the
unseen. Even to-morrow's sunrise must always be
matter of faith. If there be a special revelation, we
may find that one purpose of it is to give us in a
generally intelligible form some special ground for
fuller and more unhesitating trust.

This brings us nearer to the question whether a
special revelation may be expected in addition to the
general revelation already surveyed. Such revelation,
if such there be, must appeal to the same faculties as
the other, though it may call them into more vivid
action, and it must give the same general account of
God and the world, though perhaps from a new point of

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 125

view. The mere possibility of sucli a revelation will not
detain us long. There may be particular objections to
particular limitations ; but if a revelation be possible
at all, no general objection seems valid against anything
which is grounded on the general revelation and does
not contradict it, and in particular implies neither
ignorance nor fickleness on God's part. We might
safely reject an alleged revelation which spoke of
sundry gods, or of one capricious or immoral God, or
preached de contcmptu mundi, or evaded the final appeal
to reason by setting above it some infallible authority
or mystic intuition. Apart from self-contradictions like /
these, there is no evident a priori reason why the
general revelation should not be extended or made
plainer if need arise ; nor do we know enough of God's
plans or of the effects of sin to be sure that there is no
such need. Nor would it necessarily imply ignorance
or caprice on God's part, for it might have been foreseen
and provided for. The Lamb might have been slain
from the foundation of the world, and for us men, not
simply for our salvation.

It is also generally agreed that there is room for a
special revelation, in the sense that it might in many
ways prove helpful. If the Deists were satisfied that
it could add nothing to Natural Eeligion, they seem to
stand alone. The Agnostic may doubt or the Naturalist
deny the possibility of revelation, but neither of them
imagines that we could not do with more light than
we have already ; and even the Pantheist might almost
forgive the utter shattering of his theories if he gained
by it an authentic view of the world stib specie cefernitatis.

126 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Common men, however, feel theoretical difficulties much
less than the pressure of evil in the world. For one
who looks to things divine in simple desire of knowledge,
thousands are driven by the sense of pain in this world
to seek for help from another. The enemies of religion
are not far wrong in thinking that it will cease to be
a power in the world if they can make men happy
without it. Thereis virtue in that i/"; but the reasoning
seems sound. Without the pressure of toil and sickness
and sorrow and death, I fear few of us would care to
face the moral facts of life, and find a meaning for them.
The lotus-eaters do not seem to have had much of a
religion, and are not recorded to have produced a
philosopher. It is not on idle questions but on this
urgent problem of evil that we should look for light to
a special revelation, if such there be. In any case it is
most important to settle the question whether there is
one, for we cannot otherwise be sure that we have
before us all the conditions of the problem that are
within our understanding.

In much current discussion it seems taken for granted
that the actual development of evil in the world is final,
in the sense that there is no power in the universe
which will ever be able to alter it. Some of the
ancients did so think ; but it is a strange idea to come
upon in an age of evolutionary theories in science and
history, and reforming practice in society. Yet it is
logically implied in much current literature, though
clearly it is more than either theist or atheist can safely
assume, if he believes at all in either evolution or reform.
Perhaps those who have most clearly realized the slow-

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 127

moving advance from matter to life, from life to
conscious life, and from conscious life to moral life, will
be the slowest to foreclose all further advance from
moral life to sinless life, which if it be possible must
needs have the power of an endless life. At any rate, we
cannot assume that evil as we see it now is permanent,
unless it can be shewn that the entire evolution is
completed. And this, I think, is more than anyone will
maintain.

We need not further discuss the general question just
now. Our present concern with the evils of the world
is only so far as they affect themselves. They have
been roughly classified in familiar words as distresses of
mind, body, and estate ; but there is no Stoic paradox
in adding that distress of mind is not only the worst
form of distress, but the sting of all distress. Trouble
of estate is serious only so far as it brings bodily
privation or mental suffering ; and even disease is fairly
tolerable when it leaves the mind cheerful. Wealth is
a poor thing without health to use it ; and health itself
is forgotten in mental anguish.

We may leave the pessimists to catalogue in detail
the miseries of life. They are no doubt the most
competent persons. Suffice it that there are physical
evils the work of Nature, rising upward from the mud
of the streets to the grandeur of a Martinique eruption ;
and moral evils caused by men, downward from our
neighbour's fit of temper to the lawless violence of the
worst governments and the wilful corruption of life by
the worst rehgions. Now how do men behave in the
face of them ? Very variously, of course. One man ^

128 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

bears up, while another is crushed. One turns cynic,
another sees in them the will of heaven. One is stirred
to greater efforts, while his neighbour grows listless.
One blasphemes, while another prays. One forgets the
past, another broods over it instead of acting. One
looks with hope to the future, while the next will not
hear of hope at all, at least in this life.

Besides the contrast here of active and passive
characters, there is a deeper one which cuts across it ;
for the fundamental contrast is between attitudes of
acceptance and attitudes of rebellion, towards what is
recognized as the true order of things, or in semitheistic
language, the will of heaven. Active acceptance is
when a man frankly makes heaven's will his own will,
and strives faithfully to do whatever duties he sees
before him, while in passive acceptance he aims at
nothing better than what some call saintly resignation.
Active rebellion shews itself in open grumblings and in
fierce endeavours to do something that pleases us better
than the duty we see before us, while rebellion of a
passive sort, though no less real, comes out in the
immoral sophistries with which we make believe that
wrong is right, and in the whole tribe of irrational
disgusts and pessimistic discontents which undermine the
faith of reasoning men, that the world's order is at
bottom rational and moral.

Of those four possible attitudes, only the first is a
right one. It does not mean passive obedience to
everything that comes to pass, but active concurrence
alike in joy and sorrow, with a power believed to be
working in the world for good. It cannot accord with

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 129

the true order of things that wrong should be done by
men, though it may so accord that we should bear it if
it is done, while it is still our duty to do the best we
can to cure it. In some cases the active attitude may
be reduced to a genuine saintly resignation by sheer
inability to do more, though even then it differs toto ccelo
from the spurious resignation which is quite content
with itself. That sort of resignation is an unreal
acceptance, very near akin to the pessimist rebellion,
and essentially no better, for there is always a self-
righteous grumble at the bottom of it.

It is easy to see how these three rebellious attitudes
arise. We like our own way, and are vastly pleased
with ourselves so long as things go smoothly. But
when checks come — either serious troubles or the petty
worries we often feel as keenly — rebellion is the impulse
of the natural man. It often overcomes the best of us
in a first assault , and with most of us it is more or
less chronic, for there are few who have not brooded
over their trials till they are at times more than
half persuaded that life is nothing but misery. One
confirmed rebel puts on pious resignation, another fumes
and curses, and yet another gives himself up to mur-
muring ; but in their hearts they are all agreed against
the final postulate of rational thought and action —
that the world's order is at bottom rational and moral.
The grumbling temper they have in common is not only
the most profoundly irreligious of all tempers, but the
most fatal to reasoning action and even to truthful
thinking, for the setting up likings of our own against
the natural or the moral order of things is first of all
VOL. I.— 9

130 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

untrue. How can truth or reason or healthy action
in the world be expected from men whose wills are
cancered by the TrpcoTov -v/reOSo? of rebellion against its
rational and moral order ?

If the earthquake and the storm have slain their
thousands, these rebellious passions have slain their tens
of thousauds. By far the largest part of human misery
is the work of human impatience and discontent. By
impatience of thought we pervent or set aside the
evidence before us, that we may give ourselves licence
to believe what pleases us better than truth. By
impatience of action we rush at something we like
better than right and goodness, pushing our neighbours
out of the way and if need be tyrannizing over them.
In a more passive discontent we cherish our grievances
against the order of things, and fill our hearts with
bitterness. It is the spirit of rebellion which far more
than any intellectual error misdirects and weakens all
our powers of thought and action. Now suppose an
alleged revelation were so to emphasize the brighter side
of life, and so to assure us of the ultimate goodness
of the order of things as to strengthen well-disposed
persons in their hard battle with the misguiding and
enfeebling rebelliousness of the natural man. Would
any serious thinker tell us that such a revelation was
doing work that is not needed ? Would he not rather
feel that it was a straight blow at the central evil of the
world, the evil heart of unbelief ? Would not this be a
presumption so far of its truth ?

On the antecedent probability of a special revelation
we touched before in our discussion of the general

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 131

question ; and we have not since then found any new
factors in the problem. The question still lies between
the misery which might call forth such a revelation and
the sin which might keep it back ; and perhaps we shall
still do well not to be too sure either way. It would be
rash to object beforehand to the limitation of place or
time implied in a special revelation, for we cannot say
— even Matthew Tindal expressly refused to say — that
justice requires the same light to be given to all men.
It only requires each man to be judged by the light
which he has, and not by that which he has not. We
are not competent judges beforehand of the need for
such limitations ; and indeed it might prove that a local
or temporary limitation was the best security for a per-
manent and universal extension. Nor need there be any
objection to special methods as such, for a special reve-
lation, being ex hypothesi more or less different from the
general revelation, is not unlikely to work by more or less
different methods. However, one aspect of the question
seems much changed since we last discussed it. If God
is indeed infinite goodness, the appeal to him of human
misery must be much stronger than we could then
assume it to be. If even a man who is utterly merciless
is utterly hateful, we can hardly believe that God is
utterly careless of the great and bitter cry that comes up
from earth to, heaven. Had man no bias to rebellion,
the general revelation might have sufficed to keep him
in obedience to the true order of things ; but if as a
matter of fact it has not so sufficed, there seems to be
nothing incredible beforehand in the supposition that such
a God may have given him further and more special help.

i

132 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Some will go further, and say that such a God could not
fail to give it sooner or later. This is certainly a strong
position, and may be a very sound one ; but for the pur-
poses of a Gifford Lecturer it will suffice to take the
lower ground, that there appears at any rate no reason
beforehand why such help should not be given.

If then we were going further on this line, we might
at once discuss historically such evidence as there may
be for any alleged particular or special revelation. If we
have had to pass lightly over many thorny questions, there
are some advantages in a rapid review ; and I think
we have not left the worst of the philosophical difficulties
unfaced. Our concern, however, is not with the fact of a
past revelation, if fact it be, but with the idea we ought
to form of one supposed possible in the future ; and we
have still a little work to do before we can put our
question of what its purpose and chief end is likely to
be. What precisely do we mean by a special revelation ?
I have used the word in a loose and popular way, since
my initial notice that I could not assume it as self-evident
that a special and a miraculous revelation are necessarily
identical : but now we shall have to look at the matter
more closely.

All revelation, then, must be from God and of God,
given to men and for men, communicated on God's part
by inspiration in the wide sense which comprehends the
whole of his preparation of men for receiving it, and re-
ceived on the part of man by the joint energy of feeling,
thought, and will ; and all revelation, even if it come
through the natural order of things, requires action in
the moral or supernatural order of persons. So far all

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 133

revelations must be alike ; and though they may differ
in their subject-matter, in the purity of their teaching,
and in the depth of the insight they give, such differences
as these may not of themselves warrant us in a separate
classification of one or more as special. But there is
another possible distinction that will. It is historically t
evident that some nations, some persons, some periods of
time, some series of events, have influenced much more
than others the spiritual development of mankind. If
we compare from this point of view the Greeks and the
Phoenicians, Plato and Xenophon, the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, or the Koman and the Mongol em-
pires, we shall see the difference between the main stream
and a backwater. But if this inequality cannot be
denied, neither can the possibility that God's general
providence over the world may culminate in some more
special spiritual development of a part of the world.
There is nothing against it but the assumption which was
too rash for Matthew Tindal, that God is bound in justice
to give equal light to all men. The world is not such a
dead level as this. Some persons or peoples must be
more fitted than others to receive the revelation — or to
discover the truth — which needs next to be known at a
given time. Such fitness will not of necessity imply a
higher degree of general moral excellence. The difference
may be made by some special delicacy of feeling, grasp
of mind, or force of will, according to its nature. The
Jews, for instance, are described as bad receivers, because
they were a stiff-necked people, and slow to learn ; but
they must also have been good receivers, because they
were a stiff-necked people, and slow to forget. So too

134 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

we cau see special qualities (apart from any general
moral excellence) which may at various times have fitted
the Greeks, the Eomans, or the English to take the part
they plainly have taken in the development of human
thought on things divine.

It is therefore not unlikely that we may find in history
some revelation or series of revelations so much nearer
than others to the main line of development, that all
the rest may be treated from some points of view as
subordinate or imperfect growths. Such a revelation is
likely to contain purer truth and to give a deeper insight
than others ; but its position in history is its distinctive
character, and makes it more illuminative of others than
illuminated by them. Such central revelation, if such
there be, is what we mean by a special revelation.

It may be answered here that a central revelation is
not what is usually meant by a special revelation. I am
not so sure of that. If we do not find the distinctive
character of the latter in some miraculous method of
communication — which is a curious way of preferring
the earthen vessel to the treasure contained in it — we
must look to the character of the message itself. But
if all revelation is God's purposed message, as it must be
on any theistic theory, a revelation which contains so
much truth, or truth in such purity as to illuminate all
the rest, must be more visibly than any of them his
purposed message, and therefore a special revelation in
the common meaning of the phrase. The historical ques-
tion of miracles accompanying it would not come up till
later ; and a Gifford Lecturer is not concerned with it.

Here we are then face to face at last with the central

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 135

question of our whole investigation. If hopes of a special
revelation are not unlawful, how far can we go towards
giving them a definite form ? Such a revelation must
no doubt be neither more nor less than what God shall
please to give us ; but can we form beforehand any idea
of what he may or may not please to give ? I believe
we can. But we shall need reverence as well as wisdom
if we are to wade far into the doings of the Most High.
We must not forget the old warning/ he is above, and
we upon earth ; therefore it behoveth our words to be
wary and few. There is no sadder sight in philosophy
than the rashness with which men have taken for granted
that God rtuist do this or that. Yet we are not without
light, for even the knowledge that there is a mystery is
some knowledge ; and we are free to find its limits.
Speaking as here I do speak, under full sense of the
reverence and caution that is needed by one who takes
upon him to speak on so high and arduous a question, I
believe that while many things must be left in doubt,
some things can be laid down for certain, and others as
more or less likely. One thing, and only one, we can
safely say God imist do : he must act according to his
own nature. Given what we know of him, we may safely
start from the position that what comes from him
cannot be unworthy of him. Like himself, it must be
rational and moral ; and since the gift of a special
revelation would itself be a clinching proof of his good-
ness, it must also plainly shew that goodness. Whether
an alleged revelation fulfils these conditions is a question
of which we are not incompetent judges.

^ Eccles. V 2.

136 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

In the first place, a special revelation will certainly
be serious. It will have a purpose, and that a moral
purpose. It will not be idle spirit-rapping and table-
turning and stories of ghosts which have no moral import-
ance. If, indeed, the ghosts had a serious and otherwise
credible story which gave us new help towards right
living, we might consider their plea more fully ; but this
is just what they never seem to have. So far as we can
make sense of their messages and compare them with
known facts, we find that what is new in them is not
true, and what is true is not new. Most of these tales
may be set aside at once, though some will remain for
further consideration, like the story of Jesus of Nazareth,
where the meaning is serious enough, and the evidence
prima facie considerable. Whether it finally proves true
or false, no fair-minded man will summarily class it with
stories whose want of divine authority is only too evident
from their want of common sense.

In particular, we may safely say that a divine reve-
lation will be practical. Its purpose is ex hypothesi to
help men, not to minister to curiosity. Its concern is
with this life : of another it will only speak by way of
help for this. Thus we can hardly recognize a divine
revelation in Mahomet's elaborate descriptions of a
sensual Paradise, or in Swedenborg's accounts of the
planets. The former would be less liable to objec-
tion if we might take them allegorically ; but their
language would seem too realistic, and the Muslim com-
mentators have always understood them literally. They
exclude the allegorical as definitely as the Apocalypse
excludes the literal meaning. Speaking generally.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 137

though we are not competent to lay down very closely
the limits of that which may be morally helpful, an
alleged revelation which as a whole clearly falls outside
them cannot be divine. One that is divine will have a
side of reticence as well as one of revelation, and may
be almost as clearly marked by what it does not contain
as by what it does. Thus there is an argument in the
lines on the resurrection of Lazarus-
Behold a man raised up by Christ ;
The rest remaiueth unrevealed :
He told it not, or something sealed
The lips of that Evangelist.

Similarly, such a revelation will directly concern our
highest interests, or others incidentally and by way of
consequence. This is the point which Professor Bruce
worked out so admirably at Glasgow with regard to
omens and divination ; and in his steps we must follow
for a while. The art, then, of divination starts fairly
enough. If there are gods, we may presume that they
care for men ; and if they care for men, they will not
refuse to give them signs of their will. But then come
two great mistakes which vitiate everything. First, the
signs were expected and supposed to be given on outward
and secondary matters, such as the Stoics called ahi,d(^opa.
Thus the question may be, " Will this enterprise be a
success ? Shall I marry that woman ? Will somebody
have good luck ? " So Epictetus had the dilemma,
though he did not quite put it togetlier, that it is
impious to ask whether we ought to do our duty, for no
sign can make that clearer than it is already ; and de-
moralizing to ask what will be tlie worldly consequences

138 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

of doing it. The other mistake was in looking to
unusual events for signs, as if the common order of the
world was useless for the purpose. They did not even
choose for their signs moral facts to be interpreted by-
moral insight, but physical things like the cry of a bird
or the state of a victim's entrails, which had to be
deciphered by technical skill. The root of the mischief
was the belief in fortune instead of character as the
supreme good, and consequent unhealthy curiosity about
the future. The distrust of the moral order implied in
this kind of divination hindered true religion by the low
ideals it encouraged, and true knowledge by its arbitrary
methods and contempt of common things. It was at
once dishonouring to the gods and debasing to their
worshippers.

So far as there is a true art of divination, it can only
be a moral divination, an inverse of, By their fruits ye
shall know them ; and sometimes that will go a long way.
The second Isaiah, for instance, might very well foresee
the fall of Babylon without any miraculous help. And
if Jesus of Nazareth foretold the destruction of Jerusalem,
he said no more than a pure and thoughtful mind might
have gathered from the signs of the times — that the
savage fanaticism of the Jews would soon bring the
Eomans to take away their place and nation. So far
as this prediction goes, there is no need on any theory
to put the discourse after the event, as whole schools of
commentators do. Caution against the miraculous need
not go the length of blinding us to the possibilities of
reasonable foresight.

The next thing we can say for certain of a revelation

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 130

is that its character will be moral and rational. It will
meet the moral and rational needs of serious men, and
from the first commend itself to some of them as doing
so. Only to some, for we cannot expect it to secure
immediate and general acceptance. The more truly it
answers the noblest aspirations of the time, the more
sharply it will contradict the baser thoughts of common
men. If a new thought is needed in the world, it
cannot but run counter to the shallow popular religion
of the time — " that the thoughts of many hearts may be
revealed." The natural man will take fright ; and those
that run after a novelty are likely to drop it before long.
Better men will defend the religion they have, because
they see the truth contained in it, and do not know how
to sift out the error. The most open-minded men are
not always the clearest headed, and may not see how to
reconcile the new truth with the old. Hence a revela-
tion cannot fail to be a sword of division, sharpened by
the aggressiveness of men who have the world against
them. Still, it ought to win followers among the best
men of the time, and sometimes to extort from its worst
enemies such praise as men can give while still remaining
enemies. Thus Christianity would have a real difficulty
to explain if it could not set Origen and Athanasius
against Plotinus and Julian, or in our own time Tait and
Clerk Maxwell against Huxley and Tyndall.

Again, if we are right in supposing that a revelation
will be moral and practical, aiming rather at helping us
to right living than at satisfying our curiosity, we
cannot take for granted that it will give us a full
solution of our intellectual difficulties. We are like

y

140 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

children when compared with beings we might imagine ;
and there are many things a child cannot understand,
many he does not need to understand, and some that
might do him harm if he came to know them before his
time. Such or such-like the case must be with us. A
revelation is likely enough to make some difficulties
worse, or even to disclose new and greater difficulties, as
new light commonly does. Even science never gives a
final explanation of an observed fact : all that it can do
is to group that fact with others under a wider law,
which is a deeper mystery. We cannot expect revela-
tion to do more than this ; though its general effect, like
that of science, ought to be intellectually clearing. On
practical questions, however, of aims and motives it
might possibly speak a final word. Supposing, for
example, it were to shew us that God is good in spite of
any appearances there may be to the contrary, this
would be a final word ; for it would give us a motive
covering the whole of life, a motive which no imaginable
development of a finite being could render obsolete.

LECTURE VI.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

11.

Furthermore, a revelation will look forward, because it
is a process of education. On the divine side it is a
teaching, on the human side a learning, of things divine ;
and a process, because teaching is a process. And
since things divine must affect the whole of life, the
process of teaching broadens out into a process of
education for the man, the nation, or the race receiving
the revelation. Now there is but one method in all
sound education — -to make the learner verify things by
his own experience as fast as he is able to do it. In
the lowest stage of theory facts are given, to be taken
on trust, and commands are issued, to be obeyed in
confidence that our parents know best. But in practice
we never come down to blind trust. A very small
child can see for himself — and a wise teacher encourages
him to see for himself — that some of the facts are true,
and that some of the commands are given him for his
good ; and henceforth trust and verification go together.
The very object of education is that the learner should
return upon the facts and the commands that were given

141

142 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

him, and see for himself how far they were rightly given.
The disciple is not perfect till he is as his master. At
every step the teacher looks forward to this independent
verification, and shapes all his work with a view to it.

This is not only the method of all good teachers, but
the only possible way of dealing with the learner as a
rational creature. If therefore God is the teacher, this
is the way we must expect him to follow. If he gives
facts or issues commands, he does it in the intention
that we should verify them by experience. Even the
child can verify some things, and his elders can verify
more, though we must not be surprised if some diffi-
culties remain insoluble, for there must be elements
of mystery, and therefore room for faith, in an uncom-
pleted evolution. Hence we must expect revelation to
move, like other teaching, from the lower to the higher,
from the easier to the harder, from the simpler to the
more complex, as men are able to bear it. But at every
step it must look forward, not only to the next, but to
the whole development which is to follow. Its earliest
forms may be — -must be— sensuous and rude, to be
understanded of sensuous and rude men ; but they must
look forward to better things, and place no needless
hindrance in their way. For instance, the reference to
the deliverance from Egypt in the First Commandment
may not be so sublime as I am the Absolute, or the
Unconditioned ; but anyone can see that it is much
more practical teaching.

A revelation must look forward, it may rest on
historic facts of the past, and may even be said to
consiBt of such facts, though in that case it will more

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 143

properly consist in the gradual unfolding of their
meaning in successive ages. Such meaning is infinite ;
for if the universe is an organic whole, as on any
rational theory it must be, the complete understand-
ing of the smallest fact of history in all its bearings must
be the unravelling of the last mysteries of earth and
heaven. And if the alleged facts are really the central
facts of history, as those of a central or special revelation
ought to be, all other historical facts will fall into order
round these, so that the truth of the revelation will be
the natural key, not only to the past which went before
it, but to the future which has followed it. Thus, if
Islam were in question, we should have to ask not only
how far the earlier history of the world converged on
Mahomet's mission, but how far the truth of that
mission throws light on the developments of later ages.
How far, for instance, has Islam been the inspiration of
all that is highest in men ; and how far does it now
seem tending to gather to itself their noblest hopes and
stamp them with the mark of Mahomet ?

If an alleged revelation professes to rest on historical
facts and to be made through them, there seems to be
nothing of itself unreasonable in a further declaration
that its full benefits cannot at present be given to
others than believers in those facts. Some will raise
here an outcry about dogma ; but I think with very
little reason. The objectors are partly of opinion that
the facts are false, they partly agree with Lessing that
eternal truth cannot depend on facts of time, and they
partly resent the demand for belief in such facts as a
piece of religious tyranny. Very commonly these three

144 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

distinct arguments lie confusedly together, like the chaos
of Anaxagoras, except that mind does not come and
set them in order. Now the facts may, of course, be
false, but anyone so persuaded is bound either to argue
this question first or to set it aside entirely when he
comes to the others, for they cannot be rationally
discussed without, provisionally at least, supposing the
facts to be true. Now it may be granted that eternal
truth cannot depend on facts of time ; but why should
it not be manifested by such facts ? How else can it
be manifested ? Were God to speak to our hearts, he
must do so at such a date ; if he spoke through the
order of nature, we could say when the message reached
us ; and even if he spoke straight from heaven, that too
would be a fact of time, and our understanding of it
would be conditioned by other such facts. If we cannot
know things eternal by things of time, we cannot know
them at all. As regards the third objection, it must be
allowed that the historical facts of an alleged revelation
do limit the freedom of thought ; but they limit it only
in the same sense as other facts limit it. The fact of
the Eesurrection limits thought in exactly the same
sense as the fact of Ctesar's assassination, or the fact
that water boils at 212 degrees, and in no other sense.
Assuming all three facts true, as we are doing for the
moment, all that follows is that they must be treated
as true by all thought which in any way touches them.
If objection be further made, as it often is, that a
church has no right to make a test of historical facts,
the answer is simple. If men are at liberty to form
associations as they think fit for the promotion of

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 145

particular opinions on politics, history, or philosophy,
there cannot well be anything wrong per se in such
associations as are formed by the adherents of the
historical religions for the promotion of such opinions
as follow from the truth of their alleged historical facts.
And the right to associate for that purpose carries the
right to exclude any who do not believe such facts. A
demand to have them made an open question is a
demand for the suppression of the society as constituted
for its present purpose. If it is to be tolerated at all,
it must not be refused the elementary rights of other
societies.^

But I am afraid most of these objectors do not
even know what is meant by a dogma. An alleged
historical fact may be false ; but it cannot be a dogma,
unless we are using the word in a generally abusive
way. An interpretation put on it by some supposed
authority may be a dogma ; and as interpretations vary
in cogency, so will dogmas. Some will have a very
flimsy connexion with the alleged facts, while others
are linked on to them by reasoning which a man in his
right mind can hardly dispute. But however that may
be, historical religions are not in the same sense limited
by the interpretations or dogmas of a particular period
as by their fundamental facts. Historical facts are

^ In the -words of a writer who cannot be suspected of any prejudice in
favour of Christianity: "When a I'eligion is proclaimed to have been
revealed under given circumstances of time and place, it cannot allow its
historical tradition to be indefinitely vaporized (he is speaking of the
Gnostics) without ceasing to exist. All the religious of tliis type, whether
aggressively intolerant or not, have had to bind themselves by a creed of
more or less precision into a Church of more or less exclusiveness. "
— VV^hittaker, Neoplatonists, 222.

VOL. I. — 10

146 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

given once for all, but interpretations belong to an
uncompleted evolution ; and some distinction must be
made between religions which declare alleged facts of
history, and those which try to stereotype the dogmas
of a particular period. The one group may be mistaken,
the other must be false.

Eevelation must in any case have this forward look.
If we take it first on the divine side as a gift of truth
to men, each part of it must contribute to the whole,
and have an organic relation to parts given before and
after it. The vast diversity of mankind makes it likely
that revelation will be given iroXvfiepm Kal 7roXvrp67rco«?,
in divers parts and by divers methods as men are able
to receive it ; but it will not be given in parts unrelated
to each other. If there is a divine purpose anywhere,
it must run through the whole, and make it a solid
unity. Thus, if such a revelation be recorded in the
Bible, we have no right to work on isolated texts
without reasonable regard to the drift and meaning of
the whole. This indeed is the way most of the worst
mistakes are made. Athanasius complained of the
Arians that they built a system on the metaphor of
sonsMp without regard to other statements of Scripture ;
and later systems have been built as recklessly on other
metaphors, like those of ransom or hody. Be the docu-
ment what it may, fragmentary interpretations cannot
be right. It is childish, for instance, to quote. Being
crafty, I caught you with guile,^ in proof that St. Paul
told lies whenever he found it convenient ; or to dis-
cover a repudiation of natural duty in. Go and sell that

1 2 Cor. xii 16.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 147

thou hast/ or to gather from, No sign shall be given,^
the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth disowned the
power of working signs. All these positions have been
recently defended by men of some notoriety, and they
are all about as accurate as the rabbinic quotation, Thou
shalt follow a multitude.^ Or again, if we take the
revelation on its human side as an evolution of knowledge,
the forward look is implied in the conception of evolu-
tion as the explicit development at every stage of
something that was implicit at the last. If we cannot
expect to foresee the precise course of the development,
the connexion of successive steps will often be very
plain to those who can look back on them.

There is another consideration bearing on this for-
ward look. A revelation must consist largely — we need
not ask just now how largely — of moral truth ; and
moral truth is in essence universal. The nature of God
and the principles of duty concern all men equally. If,
then, moral truth is reached at a given time by one
nation only, that nation must be in some way specially
fitted to receive the revelation or make the discovery ;
but others will reach it likewise when they are fit to
receive it from the first. This means that a true
revelation cannot be particular, except so far as universal
truth may need to be given in local or temporary forms.
Magical rites may be a secret tradition, and the worship

^ Mt. xix 21 : and this in defiance of the fact that lie had just quoted
(ver, 19) the Fifth Commandment.

- Mk. viii 12.

^ Exod. xxiii 2. As the negative comes first in Hebrew, it may
conveniently be stopped oft'. It is really surprising that some of these
critics have not quoted, There is no God.

148 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

of H limited god may be limited ; but the revelation or
discovery of one God through facts of history, of science,
or of human nature, must be as universal as the facts
themselves. If God speaks in them, he speaks to all
who know them ; and if men discover him through
them, the discovery is free to all who can verify it for
themselves. In other words, a true revelation may be
full of adaptations to the needs of its first receivers ;
but it must contain also a universal element suited to
the needs of all men in all ages, so that the adaptations
cannot be such as could permanently bar any future
advance. It cannot impose any permanent limit, but
must be capable of passing into something higher. If
it has any laws of the Medes and Persians which alter
not, they must be such as never will need to be
altered.

To give an example. Islam will not stand this test.
It is universal enough in the sense of receiving all
comers and admitting all its converts to all its privileges
without reserve ; nor can we deny that it lifts them to
a pretty high level, at all events far above the level of
African or Indian idol-worships. The universal element
is there too, in a doctrine of God which has often stirred
men of sundry nations to splendid works of courage,
of justice, and of charity. So far well ; unfortunately,
Mahomet often appealed to lower passions, as notably
in his laws of war and in his pictures of paradise.
Worse than this, he has placed in the Koran laws which
the moral sense of men has outgrown, like those regulat-
ing the position of women ; and laws which make it
impossible for Muslims to govern other people with

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 149

justice, like that which commands the rejection of
Christian evidence against a true believer. Worst of
all, he put these laws beyond reform by a doctrine of
verbal inspiration which is not merely a common belief
about the Koran, but a principal part of its direct
teaching. Thus he effectually barred all advance to a
higher level. It cannot be reached from Islam, but only
by entirely renouncing Mahomet.

The case of Judaism is for a certain distance the
same. We find a similar welcome to proselytes and a
still higher doctrine of God ; but here again we find
statutes which were not good, and laws which make
Judaism unfit to be a permanent or universal religion.
So far it stands on the same footing as Islam. The
difference is partly that tlie Jewish conception of God
as perfect implies, and was seen to imply ,^ the promise
of a better covenant in the future, for an imperfect
covenant could not be the last gift of a perfectly good
God ; partly that the Messianic hope required every
good Jew to hold his religion subject to such reforms
as the Messiah might please to make. The Pharisees
of course overlooked both these points ; but the real
meaning of Judaism was rightly given by the baptism
of John.

The case of Christianity differs again. As in Judaism,
we have alleged facts, and principles of conduct deduced
from them. If God brought us out of Egypt, or if he
gave his Son to die for us, what manner of men ought
we to be ? But while Judaism has a whole code of law,
the Gospel makes no outward acts unconditionally

1 Jer. xxxi 31-34.

150 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

binding but the two sacraments ordained of Christ
himself. All further institutions and observances are
ordained of men, and may for good cause be changed
by men without disloyalty to Christ. Some of these,
like the observance of Sunday or the existence of a
ministry, rest on needs of human nature that will not
pass away till men are very different from what they
are. Still, even these are not of the essence of the
Gospel. The Christian ministry is no more than a
partial delegation of the universal priesthood, though
it has always been found necessary for the sake of
decency and order. The idealism even of the old
prophets looked forward to a time when any such
delegation shall be needless ; and such is also the
hope of Christians.^ Those then who maintain that
Christianity is outgrown or likely to be outgrown will
have to shew either that the Christian facts have
turned out false, or that we see our way to a better
morality than that of Christ, or that the two sacraments
are in their proper use obstructions to a higher life.
Any of these arguments will be much to the purpose ;
but nothing is gained by pointing out the historical
shortcomings of an uncompleted evolution without
shewing that such shortcomings are necessary con-
sequences of its essential principles.

But though a revelation must look forward, we cannot
expect it to make itself an anachronism and practically
useless by anticipating the reason and morality of a

' Jer. xxxi 33, 34, quoted Heb. viii 11, alluded to Apoc. xxi 3 and
similar passages, and confirmed by such as 1 John iii 2, which speak of
direct vision. Apoc. xxi 22 is also significant.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 151

distant future. Eveu if God were to speak straight
from heaven, he must still speak, as the rabbis say,
in the language of men. He cannot give more than
men are able to receive. Yet many persons, professed
believers too in evolution, seem quite ready to argue
that nothing can possibly be divine unless it is precisely
on a level with our present standard of thought and
morality. But this is asking too much. A revelation
must approve itself to conscience, and is therefore
limited by the growth of conscience. It will be enough
if an alleged revelation reaches the highest standard of
its own time, and from that level points upward and
not downward, so as to be a help and not a hindrance
to a further advance. So much we may expect ; but
we cannot safely require more.

Perhaps we may further agree that a revelation
cannot be true unless it is rational and moral, for this
can hardly be denied unless we give up the final
rationality of the universe. Mr. Kidd no doubt defends
religion while holding it contrary to reason ; but a
position of this kind reached by reason is unintelligible
till we find that the reason he contrasts with religion is
nothing more than a sense of present interest — which
is an unusual meaning for the word. But there are
others, confused thinkers who seem to take the unknown
for the unreasonable, and fancy they do honour to God
by making revelation the arbitrary declaration of his
will and nothing more, so that his nature remains
unknown, and infinite reason and justice may for aught
we know be the reverse of all that we mean by reason
and justice. This was supposed to be Mansel's position ;

152 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

aud it certainly explained the appearances of unreason
and injustice which have been a trial to serious thinkers
in all ages. But it was only one more sample of the
realistic dualism which divorces appearance from reality,
and denies our competence to reach the truth of anything
beyond our own perceptions. The defeat of this attempt
to base religion on agnosticism was the crisis of religious
thought in England in the nineteenth century. In one
direction the controversy laid open the fundamental
scepticism of Tractarianism and such-like religions of
church authority, and in another the human element in
revelation which it brought to the front was fatal to
forensic theories of the atonement and mechanical
theories of inspiration, while its reflex action opened out
a new phase of essentially agnostic thought in Hansel's
disciple, Herbert Spencer. However, no religion on the
face of the earth has been able to keep its historical
development uninfluenced by the persistent belief of
the natural man, that devotion ought to contain, not
only the element of incompleteness and mystery inherent
in all human thought, but also an element of unreason.
I fear we shall long have with us — at least in England
— the people who seem to measure heavenliness of mind
by appetite for silliness.

To take another illustration. So far as Islam claims
to be a special revelation, it is condemned at once by its
low morality. In saying this I do not forget that Islam
sets a higher standard than most religions, and has often
won its victories by undeniable moral superiority, both
in its short heroic age and in later revivals. It was
indeed the sword of God which smote both Eome and

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 153

Persia on the Yermouk and at Cadesiya, the sword of
God before which not a man could stand from India to
Spain ; and in the power of truth and right Saladin
scattered at Hattin the faithless chivalry of Latin
Europe. There was an age when Turkish justice was
more tolerable than Christian, and a day of shame when
Christendom cowered before the just rebuke of Islam
at Varna. Nevertheless I should rank the Koran
morally far below Deuteronomy. Some may think
differently; but hardly anyone will venture to put it
near the level of the New Testament. And that is
enough. A standard which is not the highest may still
be the highest reached as yet ; but the Koran is not so
much as this. When it sets aside the New Testament
it replaces it not with something better, but with some-
thing worse. Allah is merciful forsooth, and saw that
Jesus had asked too much of men, and not told them
enough about Paradise. Now this is one of the things
which a true revelation cannot do. It cannot command
us, as the Koran does, to turn downward from a higher
standard of morality to a lower.

Similarly the Montanist oracles of the Paraclete.
They presume the truth of Christianity: so for the
moment we must do likewise. Here then a special
revelation is presented to us as the fulfilment of the
Gospel, even as the Gospel was the fulfilment of the
Law. Well, what is the outcome of this higher
revelation? A few fasts, a mechanical doctrine of
inspiration, a stricter penance, and a prohibition of
second marriage. This last, by the way, is no comple-
tion of Christ's teaching, but a flat contradiction of his

154 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

answer to the Sadducees. However, let that pass.
Taking the oracles on their own shewing, are we not
moving on a lower plane than when we listened to the
lofty teaching of the Man of Nazareth ? And is not
this decisive ? Be the Gospel true or false, it bars
every claim to special revelation that has been made
in later times, except for those in whose opinion
some such revelation is morally higher than that of
Christ.

Some of these claims are further barred by want
of consistency. Take the modern revelations of the
Church of Kome. Discounting all that can be explained
by natural causes, let us imagine something remaining.
Now these revelations profess to be Christian, and are
therefore bound to be consistent with Christ's teaching.
In themselves possibly some of them are ; but logically
they are inseparable from a system whose working parts
cannot be reconciled to Christ's teaching without a
further non-rational and historically untenable claim to
determine by authority the meaning of that teaching.
That is to say, Christ's teaching and these later reve-
lations cannot both be divine. One or both must be
false, and those who do not reject both must choose
between them. As Bessarion might have said, these
new revelations make us doubt of the old.

It is of the claim to reveal something new that I am
speaking, for in another sense Islam (for example) may
have been, or rather must have been, a message from
heaven. Whatever else it may contain, the moving
force of its first heroic efforts was that thrilling and
inspiring sense of God's reality and righteousness which

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 155

the idol-worshippers of Eastern Christendom had lost.
It might mean Paradise before and hell behind ; but
none the less it also meant the old Hebrew battle-cry,
Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered : and
this was the faith in which Islam sent forth its armies
on their wonderful career of victory. Some of us may
smile at faith of that sort ; but such faith has been a
mighty force in history, and if there is a God at all his
message and his power it must be.

So too of other movements. History seems to shew
that untruth pure and simple seldom lasts long. So
when we come to something that does last we may "^
expect to find in it some truth, and therefore some
divine message. It may be very far from pure truth,
for a small amount of living truth will sometimes float
for a long time a great amount of untruth. Some will
recognize the message more or less truly when it comes,
and many more will see something of its meaning when
they look back on it in the light of history. And that
message must itself be a declaration of truth, whether
it be a revelation of now truth or a recall to old truth
now forgotten.

But here we shall need some caution to avoid making
false distinctions. In common language, revelation is
limited to moral truth, and discovery to physical truth ;
and as there is a real difference between moral and
physical truth, though on any theistic theory they agree
in being the thoughts of God, we get a valid distinction
of subject - matter. Similarly we say that God may
reveal new truth, or man discover it, but that God can
only recall as to old truth, and man can only recover

156 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

what he has forgotten ; and this again is a valid distinc-
tion. But there is no such difference of process as there
is of subject-matter. Whether old or new truth be in
question, we have no reason to suppose that God will
communicate them by entirely different methods ; and
we know that man goes to work in much the same way
to find out either. But moreover, if we take our Theism
seriously, revelation and discovery must be the same
process viewed from different standpoints. If we speak
of revelation, we say that God gives knowledge of his
thoughts ; but we imply that man receives it — or misses
it by his own fault. If we call the process discovery,
we say that man finds out what must be thoughts of
God ; but we imply that God has so disposed both him
and them that he is able to find them out. In either
case we have the same two facts — that God has ordered
things in a certain way, and that man has recognized
this order in them. There may be a difference in God's
method of communication, but in both cases God reveals ;
and a difference in the facts observed by man, but in
both cases man discovers. The divine action is not
more real in the one case, or the human in the other.
Eevelation or discovery is neither in God's giving nor in
man's receiving, but in the two together. It is neither
in God's truth without, nor in God's image within, but
in the meeting of the two. It comes to pass whenever
God's image within recognizes God's truth without. No
matter so far about the kind of truth. Be it physical
or mental or spiritual : in all cases revelation and
discovery go together. The divine and the human are
always both implied; and we can no more have the one

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 157

without the other than we can have the north without
the south, or a circle without a centre.

In common language, revelation refers to religious
truth, discovery to physical truth ; and the difference
of words corresponds to another real difference of mean-
ing. Discovery suggests the uncovering of a particular
thing; revelation is the removal of a vail which more
generally obstructs our sight. In fact, we have seen
that the moral failings whicji generally hinder our grasp
of moral truth are also the chief causes of the intellectual
failings which specially hinder our discovery of scientific
or historical truth. A third word used in the New
Testament, especially by St. Paul, gives us an interesting
side view of the whole process. The word manifestation
presents truth neither as revealed by God nor as dis-
covered by man, but as shining out by its own light,
and gradually shining through the vail till it becomes
distinct. There is a revelation when the curtains are
drawn back to let in the sunshine, a manifestation when
the light of the dawn shineth more and more unto the
perfect day. Is there not a development here ? Does
not the word well describe the gradual way in which
new truth is borne in on men and on mankind ? First
it is dimly seen, or only seen in part, or seen in con-
fused relations ; gradually the clouds clear off and the
surroundings come out in their true perspective. First
we have our doubts, then fightings within, and at last
unhesitating certainty. First one man sees his way,
then another, and at last there is a more or less general
agreement, and the old ideas of science or morality
become obsolete. This duelling (I mean in England)

158 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

has become absurd as well as criminal, our statesmen do
not drink and gamble in the way Pitt and Fox did, and
even the restorers of slavery have prudence enough to
call it something else. We take these things as a
matter of course, and forget that every moral belief
which makes us better than our fathers was won for us
in hard battle with powers of evil, and will be lost again
if we let it sink from the plane of faith to that of
orthodoxy.

Like this must be the history of revelation, if man is
to remain a moral being, with freedom to hear or to
forbear. No doubt God might rend the heavens and
come down, with the melting fire burning at his feet ;
and then man perforce would have to believe : and God
might further constrain him always to think and do the
right thing. Then we might have a peaceful world, a
fairer world by far than this that we have disfigured in
our ignorance and selfishness. But it would be a baser
world, for it would have lost the promise and the potency
of better things. Imagine some immortal spirit watch-
ing from afar the stately course of ages on the earth.
First he sees chaos formed into an ordered world, then
from the midst of matter rises life, then crowning life
comes conscience, learning more and more its true
affinity and likeness to the Lord of all. At last he
thinks he sees a meaning for the mighty structure, and
is watching its upward growth with keener interest than
ever, when a sudden blow crashes it all in fragments, and
leaves the heaven -pointing spire a pile of ruins. Would
it not put him to intellectual confusion ? Better the
drunkard in the street than a machine which does the

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 159

right thing ; for there is some hope of the drunkard, and
there is none of a machine. Better a world of beasts
than a world of men who have lost the freedom which
makes them better than the beasts. A world where
sorrow and sighing flee away, and there is no more toil
and no more death — such a world is not fit for such
rebels as we are, and would be worse for us than this
world if we had it. Dark as the problem is, and com-
plicated every way by sin, the chief difficulty is the
craving of the natural man, not simply for pleasure, but
for unmixed pleasure ; and we shall see light as soon as
we get rid of that. Sorrow and sighing and toil and
death must be here for a purpose, and we can partly see
that purpose in the enrichment of life and the training
of character. And if character be the highest good,
that which trains it cannot be the reverse of good. But
that which trains is not sin in itself, which is evil pure
and simple, but the mysterious order that works it round
for good, and gives redeeming and restoring power to
the brave and loving acceptance of toil and suffering by
the innocent on behalf of the ignorant and them that
are out of the way. Be the difficulty what it may, the
order of things must finally be rational and good, for
otherwise thought itself, and the difficulty with it, is
meaningless. If so, the old trust in God is good
philosophy as well as true religion.

But we are drifting away from the argument. Our
point was that a revelation must always be rational and
moral, and capable of recognition as such, though by
no means likely to be so recognized at once and
generally. Were it ever so true, its claim to moral

160 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

authority would always have agamst it an immense
mass of opinion shaped by other forces than the love
of truth, so that it could only make way gradually, and
through formidable conflicts.

But to what faculties will it appeal ? From experience
we judge that the world's order is rational and moral ; and
from experience we must judge whether an alleged revela-
tion is rational and moral : and the same faculties which
give us the one experience will also give us the other. I
say experience rather than knowledge, because a purely
theoretical knowledge, if such were possible, would have
no moral value. We can get no real and effective
knowledge even of this world except by acting on what
we know already. We cannot expect to solve the
harder problems till we have fairly worked out the
easier. A bad son is not likely to be a good father,
and the man who has not learned to obey is unfit to
command. The range of needful faculties is the range
of human nature. We must have feeling to suggest a
meaning for what passes before us, intellect to define
and verify that meaning, and will to work it out in the
experience of life. By this process we come to know
what we know of Nature and ourselves, and by this
process must we come to know what we can know of
revelation. It must speak to the whole man.

The process then of revelation is fairly clear. If God
is a Person, we must get our knowledge of him in much
the same way as we get our knowledge of men. We
see their outward forms, but we no more see them than
we see God. Yet we see their actions, and if we care
to reason on them we can draw conclusions. Then, as

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 161

we ponder lovingly the works and words of those we
love, we see more and more of their meaning : and
sometimes again come unbidden thoughts, we know not
whence or how, to give us further insight. So also
must it be with the knowledge of God. If he dwells
in the light whereunto no man can approach, he is not
for that reason harder to know than the friend of our
life behind the wall of personality that keeps us in our
awful isolation from each other. Barrier for barrier, we
have no reason to suppose that one is harder than the
other for love to overleap. In either case and equally
the eyes of sense will fail, for it is not simply with our
outward eye that we have knowledge of our fellow-men ;
but if the arms of faith stretch outward to the living
persons of our unseen friends, why should they not
stretch outward also to the living Person of the unseen
Lord whose image we bear ? We see what must be his
actions all around us ; and if we are willing to reason
on them we can draw conclusions, even as we draw
conclusions from the actions of a friend whom possibly
our eyes have never seen. Then, if we ponder well his
works as works of one we love, we ought to see more
and more of their meaning ; and some there are who
tell us that so they do. Nor is there anything incred-
ible or even unlikely in what they further tell us, that
sometimes unbidden thoughts come — whence they think
they know, but not how — which give them further insight.
Let us pause for awhile on these unbidden thoughts.
We cannot probe them to the bottom, and we shall not
need to probe them very deep. Indeed it may be that
the origin of human thought is a subject full of danger

VOL. I. — II

1G2 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

except for those to whom all things are pure. There is
no subject where fools are more ready to rush in, no
subject more encumbered with legends and uncertain
stories, and perplexed with idle marvels and unhealthy
dreamings. The exact limits of the Terra incognita may
be hard to fix ; but there is no great difficulty in roughly
settling them. In whatever way a given train of
thought arises, whether from a conscious impression or
not, when it is once begun, the will has a good deal of
selective power to continue it or turn it aside, or to
break it off entirely. In the main it seems linked
together by imperfectly understood laws of association,
as if one thought or some feature of it suggested the
next ; so that here again the will has a good deal of
power to recover lost thoughts by retracing their
associations, or to obtain new thoughts of any sort we
desire by cultivating thoughts likely to be associated
with them, and therefore to suggest them to us. The
(j)p6vT]fxa of a man — the selection of thoughts he
cultivates — is the most characteristic product of his
will.

The connexion of thoughts is often very clear ; and
even the romance of dreams frequently has an evident
and prosaic origin. The sound of a servant's knock is
magnified into the noise of battle ; and the vision of a
distant light across a furrowed field was caused by a
ribbed shading on the gas-light which I could hardly
see when awake. Sometimes, however, the connexions
are distant or obscure. Why should I wake up with
a dream of a bit of Brazilian history I picked up years
before at school, and have never seen since ? Why

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 163

should we dream of monsters that never lived on land
or sea, or why should the visions that float before us
even in our waking hours change from one face to
another like dissolving views ?

Clearly the ultimate analysis of these things is
beyond our present powers. We know little more than
the surface waters of the great deep of human nature.
Our sight is dull, our sounding lines are short, and all
below is mystery. Yet our nature does not seem like
the coral reefs, where the surface layer only is living
growth, and all below is dead. On the contrary, the
subconscious deep would seem as full of life and purpose
as the conscious surface. Hartmann was a true seer
when he preached the supreme wisdom of the unconscious,
though he mistook it for unconscious wisdom of the
Supreme, and allowed a juggle of words to hide the
natural inference, that what is absurdly called un-
conscious purpose in ourselves must express the conscious
purpose of Another.

It may be that the separating wall of personality goes
sheer and solid to the bottom ; but all the evidence
tends to shew that there is no essential difference be-
tween the conscious and the subconscious regions, and
tliat the latter is as open as the former to influences
from outside. Sensation as a whole would seem to be
continuous like the spectrum, where there are invisible
waves of the same nature as the visible, so that while
they do not reach the eye as light, they shew themselves
in chemical and other effects. Similarly with sound.
Some of our impressions seem to lie wholly on the
surface, and if they go lower we are not conscious of it.

164 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Others wliich also lie on the surface plainly dip below it.
We feel ; but we know that we feel more than we know.
We cannot analyse the beauty of the flower in the
crannied wall, or grasp the mystery of the great sea that
roUeth evermore, fit emblem of the world of deeper
mystery within us. A third class of impressions would
seem, as it were, to strike the surface and dip below it to
be lost for awhile and come up again later, like a lost
clue or a forgotten name. They have been stored up
meanwhile — perhaps not idle — in the subconscious
region, and come up as if they had originally struck
there ; but we know them again because we have seen
them before.

Now, may there not be a fourth class of impressions
which strike first on the subconscious region, and work
there for a time before their effects come to the surface ?
They will come up like the last class, except that we
shall not recognize them, because we have not seen them
before. If impressions from outside reach us through
the senses, they will not necessarily touch the senses
between the limits where consciousness begins and ends.
We know that the waves of light and sound are as real
below the limits of sight and hearing as above them ;
and might be perceived by keener senses than ours, or
possibly in some rare cases by our own. If Elisha really
heard the words the king spake in his bedchamber,
such experience would be unusual, if not unique ; but
we could not summarily declare the story contrary to
natural law. If evidence of the fact were brought, we
should have to examine it fairly. If our senses are more
delicate or wider in range than the recording conscious-

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 165

ness, we can see how mind may have its wireless
telegraphy as well as matter.

Though on the surface of our nature we are sharply

separated individuals, there is evidence of mysterious

connexions below the reach of consciousness. The

separating wall of personality seems built on arches. If

we are members of each other in our physical life and in

our social relations, why not in mind and spirit also ?

It may be, as I have heard Bishop Westcott argue,^ that

the unbidden thoughts of goodness which come to us, we

know not whence or how, are due to the subconscious

influence (he said the prayers) of absent friends. Such

a theory is of course unproved ; but can it be disproved ?

Does it require a breach of any known natural law ? If

so, let the breach be shewn : if not, let it be admitted as

a possibility. If true, it shews how prayer may be a

real force in the world without our seeing it. Perhaps

its possibility will be most readily allowed by those who

are most impressed by the deepening mystery of Nature

disclosed by science in these last few years : and surely

there are more things in heaven and earth than science

has ever dreamed of yet.

But, especially if the possibility of human suggestion
in the subconscious region be admitted, we can hardly
deny the possibility of divine suggestion. In one sense,
no doubt, every true thought must be of divine sugges-
tion ; for if there is a God not lower than the beasts, we
need no Gospel to tell us that there is such a thing as
providence, — which in this case means that the order of
things has been so arranged and guided as to suggest

^ The evening of my own ordination, 20th December 1891.

166 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

such true thought. This indirect suggestion, if I may-
guard my words with a condition, may perhaps be a
sufficient account of the element of divine suggestion
which is implied in revelation, though religious ex-
perience may indicate occasional suggestion of a more
direct sort, so that we shall do well to leave the
question open.

The condition without which indirect suggestion would
by itself be no account of the matter at all is this.
What comes to us as a suggestion through natural causes
must be as purposed a message of God, and may in some
cases be as certainly recognized for such a message, as
if he spoke it from the burning bush. The certainty of
the message, and of its meaning, may flash out at once,
or it may grow upon us as we ponder it. The sugges-
tion itself may be a new fact, a fresh touch of feeling, or
a strengthened purpose. By the opening of our eyes,
the warming of our hearts, or the bracing of our will we
know that the suggestion which came to us through
natural channels was divine. On this condition only
will there be even a possibility of accounting fully for
the divine element in revelation without a more direct
divine suggestion.

Such more direct suggestion, if such were given, would
not of necessity be consciously received. It might work
for a while in the subconscious region like its human
parallel, and contribute in the same way to conscious
results. As regards the recognition and verification of a
divine element in these results, there is no reason for
making an exception to the rule that things divine are
known by their rationality and goodness, or at any rate

»

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 167

by their necessary connexion with something already so
approved to be divine. The voice that bids us calm that
evil passion or give up that hatred is divine, come it
whence or how it may ; and so is the conviction which
grows on us, that evil shall not for ever prosper ; and
we know them to be divine by their rationality and
goodness. If the pondered certainty of the prophet is
more vivid than the belief of common men, it is not
necessarily different in kind.

Any divine suggestion must of course be consistent
with infinite wisdom and goodness, and generally con-
nected with the entire plan of revelation, though we
cannot expect always to see the precise nature of the
connexion. But whether it be sometimes direct or
always indirect, the only other limit we can fix for it
beforehand is that it cannot give more than the subject
of it is able to receive. But we cannot say beforehand
how deeply a man may be enabled to see into the secret
of the world, or how completely a willing heart may be
brought into sympathy with the order of things. If the
possibility of divine suggestion be admitted in any form —
and it can hardly be denied to a personal God — we cannot
rule out in limine the claims of prophets to bear special
messages, or even the supreme claim ascribed to Jesus of
Nazareth, to be God's perfect representative. If evidence
be offered for such claims, we are not entitled to dis-
regard it.

LECTURE VIl.

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE.

This brings us to the question of inspiration. The
word has been connected with so many wild theories
in past ages that it is now in some disgrace ; and at
first sight it may seem related rather to miraculous
revelations than to Natural Theology. Yet it stands
for a necessary part even of this. If there is any sort
of revelation there must be some sort of inspiration,
for the two words imply the same thing viewed from
different standpoints. Eevelation refers the knowledge
given to the God who gives it, while inspiration takes
it from the side of the man who receives it. Inspiration
differs from discovery, which also views the knowledge
from the human side, in having to do not with the
man's reception of it, but with his preparation for
receiving it. Now this preparation cannot be limited
to any supposed divine affiahis at the time of speaking
or writing. Such ajflatus, whatever it be, comes in any
case to a man of given character and environment ; and
if it is not pure magic it will be conditioned by these,
and the idea of inspiration must take in the shaping of
his character and of his whole environment.

But now, if even physical truth cannot be received

168

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 169

without more or less preparation of diligent study, we
can hardly doubt that some measure of purity and
truthfulness will be needed for the recognition of
divine truth, however it be presented. Yet so strong
is the tendency of the natural man to find religion in
unreason, that the followers even of the higher religions
have commonly enough turned inspiration into a piece
of magic, to the grievous injury of the rationality which
must in any case be a principal feature of all God's
dealings with men. This is the error of all theories
which make prophecy ecstatic, as in the Delphic
oracle, or inspiration mechanical, as in the Koran.
There are two objections to all theories of this kind.
In the first place, though God constantly uses men to
work out purposes of which they have no conception, he
cannot be supposed to use them as these theories imply
— simply as live tools and not as moral beings. For
us to use them so is confessedly immoral ; indeed, the
wrong of slavery or of fornication is just this, that we
so use each other without forming true personal rela-
tions. And what is wrong for us is no more made
right for God than for any tyrant by his power. More-
over, for the second objection, spiritual truth is not like
a message we might learn by heart and deliver correctly
without understanding it. Some such idea underlies the
famous question, If the words are not inspired, what is ?
Words have no such fixed value as a mathematical
symbol, which always means the same thing to all men
who are able to use it. They cannot be more than
signs of a message behind them ; and if that message
is meant to convey anything else than mathematical

170 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

theorems, we cannot receive it as a magical formula,
but must more or less digest it and make it a part of
ourselves. And this we cannot do without some sort of
moral preparation of the whole man. Mere intellect
attacking moral questions will fare no better than
common sense trying to solve mathematical problems.

There is error too on the other side, when the
inspiration implied in religion is put on a level with
that of some great teacher like Socrates. True, I
believe the difference is of subject and purpose rather
than of kind. In any case, all recognition of truth
must be " thinking God's thoughts after him," as
Kepler said. But those who level Christ and Socrates
commonly treat them both as purely human, instead of
taking seriously the divine they ostensibly claim for
both. By all means let Plato be called inspired, but
not to the denial of even higher inspiration which may
be evident elsewhere. There is a difference not only of
degree but of subject between the parables of Jesus and
the myths of Plato ; and if living is higher than know^-
ing, there can be no doubt which of the two has the
higher theme and the more directly religious purpose.
It is rather this difference of subject and purpose than
a difference of kind in the inspiration which seems to
distinguish the higher forms of revelation. There may
also be a great difference in the matter of historical
influence. Many " inspired " books (and some others,
like the Chinese Classics, for which no claim of special
inspiration is made) have been regarded more or less as
Bibles by more or less civilized peoples, and more or less
justified the canonical position assigned to them by a

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 171

more or less healthy influence in the world. By their
fruits ye shall know them, was said to them of old ; and
this is a test which may help us to judge of teaching as
well as of teachers.

For it is further to be noted that inspiration may
vary greatly from man to man, or in the same man at
different times ; for no inspiration but that of perfect
sinlessness can lift our mortal weakness to more than
partial and intermittent \dews of things divine. The
divine fire that in one man sputters out a few sparks
may in another blaze up in a bright and clear flame.
An Elijah may stand out one day in more than royal
majesty on Carmel, and the next be cowering away from
the threats of Jezebel. So the resulting revelation will
vary as much in its purity from alloy of baser things.
There are sayings in the Talmud which might be divine ;
but they stand in a very small proportion to the things
that cannot be divine. Plato falls off at times, and even
in the Bible there is surely a vast difference between
Proverbs and Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Isaiah.

If then inspiration is not a piece of magic, but
requires moral action from the seer himself, his first
qualification must be the purity and truthfulness needed
for the knowledge of things divine, and the revelation
will commonly be won like other knowledge by patient
and earnest effort. Balaam is not a real exception,
though he is represented as a bad man, and yet as
having much spiritual insight. We take the story as
we find it, simply as a study of character ; for if the son
of Beor is a legend, there are other Balaams in history.
You will note that he is not a bad man when we first

172 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

meet him, but one of lofty spiritual aims, and held in
high and seemingly deserved respect, so that his insight
is not surprising. But he has his unsoundness like the
rest of us, so that when he begins to tamper with
temptation he gets fairly on the downhill road, and
becomes a bad man by the time he goes to his own
place. The Jewish commentators are not so far wrong
when they explain, That is, to Gehenna. The character
may not be common, but it does occur. A man can feed
for a short time on the husks of any knowledge he is
allowing to wither ; and spiritual knowledge is no
exception.

But w^e cannot take the seer by himself without
regard to his environment. Nature, history, and life
must all contribute to the work. Amos draws his
inspiration from the wilderness of Judah, while Isaiah is
a statesman watching the advance of the Assyrian world-
power. The Old Testament speaks the language of the
mountain heights, the Koran the dialect of the desert.
Saul of Tarsus unites in his own person the cultures of
Israel and Greece and Kome, while St. John has fed for
more than half a century on memories of one who spake
as never man spake, ^schylus is stirred to prophecy
by the ruin of Persian pride, Gregory vii by the
rampant anarchy of feudal Europe. Luther denounces
the rapacious ungodliness of a heathenized papacy, and
the Puritan delivers his testimony against the immoral
frivolity of Stuart society. They are all men of their
own age, speaking to their own contemporaries. If
there are a few great men like John Scotus or Frederick
of Sicily so faintly marked by the characters of their

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 173

own age that at first sight they might almost belong to
another, these are men we never find among the prophets.
The prophet's power is not in predictions of the
future, though he may adventure some, nor in visions
of another world if he have any, but in vivid under-
standing of his own age. Insight is his mark, not
foresight, though marvellous foresight may come of true
insight. He may see as clearly as any statesman the
bearing of political or social questions ; but his point
of view is not the statesman's. He looks at the world
like Spinoza suh specie ceternitatis, though not as a purely
intellectual problem like Spinoza, nor even as a purely
moral problem related to impersonal right, but as a
religious problem related to a living God. His aim is
to see the world of his own time as God sees it — to
tear open its hypocrisies and self-deceits, to unmask
its falsehoods, to give its ambitions and achievements
their true value, to trace and cherish every seed of good
in it, — in a word, to view it in the unchanging light of
the Eternal's right and goodness. God's words are
what he strives to speak ; and therefore he must needs
begin. Thus saith the Lord. So Mahomet saw through
the heathenism of the Arabs, and told them in God's
name that their idol-worships turned his face away
from them. So Jesus of Nazareth saw the obsoleteness
of the Temple worship, and the immorality of the
traditions which the Pharisees had put in its place,
and traced to the estrangement of the nation from God
the hatred of Gentiles, which made the Temple first a
house of merchandise, then a cave of brigands, and at
last a Eoman slaughter-house.

174 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

The prophet speaks not to future ages, but to the
men of his own time. His words are shaped by the
ideas of his own time, and by the environment of his
own time. If Israel is the kingdom of Jehovah, he will
reach his conception of the heavenly King by idealizing
the earthly prince ^ of David's line. Something also of
the splendour of the heavenly will be reflected on an
earthly viceroy who shall have dominion from sea to sea,
and from the river to the ends of the earth. The ideal
kingdom of the future is the earthly kingdom as he
knows it idealized. " Behold, I will take the children
of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone,
and will gather them on every side, and bring them
into their own land : and I will make them one nation
in the land upon the mountains of Israel ; and one king
shall be king to them all . . . neither shall they defile
themselves any more with their idols, ... so shall they
be my people, and I will be their God. And David
my servant shall be king over them." ^ It is the old
kingdom of Ezekiel's youth ; but the feud of tribes is
forgotten, the idols are abolished, and the weakness of
Zedekiah is remembered no more. So too the rest of
the pictures of the future.

To the men of his own time the prophet speaks, not
to others ; yet his words are words for all generations.
He watches the signs of the times as keenly as any
scheming politician ; but the facts of time are not
mere events to him, but the embodiment of eternal

^ The proper title of the earthly king was Tii ruler, not tj^o king, e.g.
1 Sam. X 1, 1 Kings xvi 2.
2 Ezek. xxxvii 21-24.

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 175

principles. If God is God, the course of history must
be not only rational, but the ordered purpose of eternal
right and goodness ; and we know generally what that
purpose is. If we cannot cast a horoscope of men and
nations, we can see the moral forces working in the
world, and the moral forces must prevail in the end.
Thus, if the Assyrian be the embodiment of godless
violence, God's rightness requires that he should pass
away when he has done the work appointed him. An
unrighteous power cannot be a righteous God's last
word in history. If Jerusalem has sinned, God's right-
ness requires that she should suffer ; but God's goodness
requires also that she should be restored when her
warfare is accomplished and her iniquity pardoned.
Then straightway the final victory. The prophet looks
backward from the end of time, as well as forward from
his own age, so that his vision has no perspective. It
is a dissolving view. If the judgment of Israel is the
foreground, the judgment of the world looms up behind
it, and looms up more impressively the longer we look.
Each present enemy, be it Assyria or Babylon or Greece
or Eome, so fully embodies for him the principle of
godless pride, that when that is overcome the last
enemy is destroyed, and the whole contest is ended.
This is idealism, however shaped by the solid facts of
present history ; therefore on one side the prophet's words
find a true fulfilment in every age, and on another they
can have no complete fulfilment before the end of time.
He sees the streamlet rushing down the slope, and
knows that it must reach the sea ; but we in later
times have traced it swirling through many a narrow

17G THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

pass, and joining its course with many a stream from
many another mountain range ; and we know that there
is a long and weary journey still before the majestic
river can pour its waters into the eternal ocean.

Some persons may raise the question here, whether
prophecy is not the very thing Lord Gifford barred out
by the word miraculous. So it might be, if it were
presented in the old way, as a peculiar power of pre-
diction depending very little on moral qualities. But
the prophecy we are speaking of is no way magical, and
is not specially concerned with prediction. It is the
insight natural to a pure heart and truthful mind, which
is open to us all ; and so far as we too labour for a pure
heart and truthful mind there is no reason why we
should not in our measure share the gift with them of
old. To the best of my judgment, this moral insight (if
the divine element in it be taken into account) covers
all alleged prophecy, whether preaching or prediction,
which needs to be seriously considered ; and we shall
run some risk of turning inspiration into magic if we
go further. At all events this moral insight is a
plain fact, and covers much more of the ground than
is commonly supposed. Indeed, even on sceptical
principles (if I may adopt them for the moment) I
cannot help thinking that the critics are often much
too ready to bring up the universal solvent, by dating
alleged predictions after the event. For instance, there
seems to be nothing of itself unlikely in the statement
that Nathan gave to David some such promise of an
enduring house as we find recorded.^ Far too much

^ 2 Sam. vii.

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 177

may have been found in it ; but the belief of later times
that it came true is not sufficient reason for dating it
after the Eeturn.

Another reason for the permanent value of prophecy
is that human nature is much the same in all ages.
The cheating tradesman in Amos or Micah has left a
large posterity, Pharisees and Sadducees are always with
us, and Jews and Greeks are as common in London as
they ever were at Corinth, though we call them other
names. As of old, one man leans to tradition, another
to his own understanding ; one wants a miracle to crush
his doubts, while another debases the search for truth
into intellectual fencing. The old passions are un-
changed, the old cleavages of thought are permanent
from age to age. Therefore the prophet's message is
abiding, though his words must wear the dress of
time.

But if revelation is thus closely related to the thought
of its own time, it must be a subject of development
like human thought itself. To an uncultivated people
even simple truth can only be given in simple form,
under vivid images and sensuous conceptions. The
rude justice of an avenger of blood may be a true
revelation for men who were used to tribal fights ;
and a national God of Israel might be a stage on the
road to a Father in heaven. As thought developed, and
problem after problem opened out in course of ages, so
must revelation too develop out in answer to them.
Thus the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth would have
been premature in Israel if the teaching of history had
not made acute the conflict between the universalism of

VOL. I. — 12

178 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

prophecy and the particularism of the law ; and pre-
mature in the world, if the blows of the Eoman hammer
had not welded the nations of the earth into a political
unity. There cannot be a revelation given once for all
in all the fulness of its meaning. If Islam claims to
be such, Christianity does not. Even though Jesus of
Nazareth declared himself to be the full and final
revelation of the Father, he warned his disciples that
it would be a work of time to recognize the full mean-
ing of his Person. Eevelation must start from rude
beginnings, and gradually develop (may be with loss as
well as gain at every step) the form which explains its
earlier growth, and is the only form by which it can be
reasonably judged.

There seems then to be nothing in the conception of
revelation to require that the prophet should be in-
fallible, in the sense that his statements of scientific
and historic truth, his judgments of men, and his
presentations of moral truth, should in all cases
commend themselves entirely to the maturer views of
later ages. Inspiration is not bound summarily to do
away the limitations of human nature. And if the
prophet himself need not be infallible, neither need the
record of his words.

But some will say, If the prophet's message is as
human as if it were nothing more than human, it cannot
escape the touch of human infirmity. Were he a mere
tool in God's hands, a mere channel of communication
and nothing more, the divine message might be given as
unconditioned truth, or at least without any admixture
of error. But if it is any way conditioned by passing

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 179

through his mind, there must be some alloy in the truth
he declares ; and if there is any alloy at all, how can
we make allowance for it, or what security have we that
there is any truth left ? Better no message at all than
one we cannot positively know to be delivered with un-
erring accuracy.

Extremes meet again. This used to be the standard
defence of verbal inspiration ; and the antitheists have
now found out that it is a redudio ad ahsurdum of all
inspiration. But before we go further, is there not one
plain blunder on the surface ? If God sends a message,
he will choose the messenger ; and we need not put the
case that he will do what no man of common sense will
do, by choosing such a messenger as will entirely falsify
it. But what of the main argument ? We can all
agree to the first step — that if man is not purely
passive in receiving the message, it cannot escape the
touch of human infirmity — and then we part company.
The believer in verbal inspiration says that revelation is
real, and therefore man's part is passive ; the antitheist
replies that as a matter of fact man's part is not passive,
and therefore revelation cannot be real. Extremes meet
again in the assumption that if revelation be real the
message cannot be touched with human infirmity ; and
this assumption is false. Given a true revelation, it is
neither possible nor needful, perhaps not even desirable,
for it to escape the imperfections of human infirmity.

On the human side, it is not possible. Whatever be
the prophet's purity and truthfulness, there are limits at
all events to his sympathy with things divine, and there-
fore to his capacity of receiving them. Some things he

180 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

could not understand if they were told him, and some
that he does understand he will only understand in
part ; for he can only understand them in terms of his
own knowledge. He cannot make bricks without straw ;
and if the straw is not of the best, the bricks may be the
worse for it. He might no doubt be kept from error by
a supernatural dictation overriding his human weakness
as often as might be necessary ; and the believers in
verbal inspiration had to suppose that this dictation was
given. But the antitheists (and some who were much
the reverse of antitheists) very justly replied that this is
a large assumption, and quite unlike all other action
supposed to be divine. Even if it be granted that a
special revelation may require special means, we cannot
easily believe that revelation in its special form drops
its moral requirements and sinks into the mechanical.
At all events, the theory is contrary to evidence. Some
alleged revelations claim no such inerrancy ; and if
any do, they completely fail to make good their claim.
Errors of transmission, such as various readings, are
undeniable. These, however, may be allowed to pass,
though they make the inerrancy rather futile ; and many
other difficulties may be got over with more or less
success ; but after all reasonable allowances, all sacred
books of all religions leave a considerable remainder of
facts hopelessly inconsistent with any theory of verbal
inspiration. And failing some such supernatural inter-
ference to put his human weakness out of the way, the
prophet cannot do more than give his message subject to
that weakness, in so far as the message itself does not
lift him above it.

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 181

Perhaps it is not even desirable that the message
should be given free from human weakness. If God is
good, he must have put limitations on us and allowed
their consequences for a good purpose, so that it might
not be for our good if those limitations were broken
through by a higher power. It is just the power of the
prophet, that he speaks as man to men on God's behalf ;
and if he is to speak as man, he must speak with the
limitations of human weakness. If the weakness of the
man is done away, the power of the prophet is done away
too. It is but a case of the great question of free will.
Whatever the advantages of acting freely, and whatever
the advantages of acting necessarily, at all events omni-
potence itself cannot give us both together.

As regards the divine side, I am not aware that any
immediate purpose for inspiration has been suggested but
that of securing the faithful delivery of the message ; and
if God's purpose is not to be stultified, it must secure
such delivery so far as that purpose requires. This is
the germ of truth in verbal inspiration, though the
theory itself is the same logical mistake as that of church
infallibility. Whether God sends a message or founds
a church, we can safely say that he will not allow his
purpose to be completely and finally stultified by any
perversity of men ; but it is a monstrous leap from this
to the inference that the words of a book or the decisions
of a church must be pure truth. Inspiration then, which
is the training of the prophet, will guarantee his message
so far as its proper purpose requires, but not necessarily
any further. If more be asserted, it will have to be
proved ; and that not by a 'priori assumptions, but by

182 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

the evidence of the message itself, whether so in fact
it is.

The principle seems clear, though its application may
he hindered by doubts how far the purpose of the
message extends. On doubtful ground we must move
with caution ; but if anything seem to belong only to
the form of the message, we must not be surprised to
find mistakes in it. Conversely, anything clearly
essential must be true, if the message is divine. Christi-
anity, for instance, so obviously makes the Person (not
the teaching) of Christ the message, that its records do
seem pledged to give a substantially true account of his
life and character ; so that, if they fail in this, the
message is false, or at any rate very different from what
the Christians take it for. If there be a divine message,

9

there or elsewhere, it must be perfect, but perfect only
for its proper purpose. And that purpose may be rather
to stimulate conscience than to give full information. A
character can be clearly shewn by a very meagre selection
of incidents. At any rate, we cannot assume that the
record will be perfect for any use to which we may please
to put — say, as sortes sanctorum, as a text-book of science
or as a horoscope of the future.

The next step would be to investigate the proper pur-
pose of a special revelation, if such there be, and see how
far it can be defined beforehand. First, however, it will
be necessary to discuss another question of great import-
ance. As we have seen, we are not so well acquainted
with God's plans and methods that we can form any
presumption against a special revelation or a special
messenger entrusted with it. But is it equally open to

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 183

him to use special means ? Has Natural Theology any-
thing to say on the possibility that such a message may
involve facts of the kind commonly called miraculous ?
In past ages men believed not only that it might, but
that it must ; so that a revelation not vouched by miracle
could not be divine. Of late years, however, the tendency
has been to a summary rejection of miracle as a self-
evident untruth. Instead of proof, it is become a pure
encumbrance on a revelation. So manifest is the
absurdity that it is waste of time to consider the
evidence ; all that can possibly be worth doing is to see
how the untruth arose. As the early Christians were
ordered straight to execution the moment they declared
themselves Christians, so miracle is condemned the
moment it appears as miracle. Its opponents, to do
them justice, are polite enough to give it a trial, but
only a sort of post-mortem trial, subject to the condition
that evidence offered for the defendant shall in no
case be allowed to affect the sentence that has already
been pronounced in the name of science.

If miracle be defined as contrary to the order of
things or unrelated to it, all that can be said is that
such a thing is not even thinkable, much less possibly
true. But the definition presented by its advocates is
not this ; and if we summarily assume that it can be
reduced to this we summarily assume the question at
issue. Even the incautious people who delight in telling
us that miracle is contrary to the natural order, will
strenuously maintain that it is in accordance with some
higher or spiritual order ; and their plea cannot be set
aside till the natural order is proved to be the whole

184 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

order. But the more sober opinion has always been, as
Butler puts it, that while miracle is confessedly un-
like the natural order as at present known to us,
our knowledge is not so complete that we can
safely pronounce it contrary to the natural order. So
Augustine too had put it long before,^ and so I will
take it, though I think the unlikeness is more precisely
to the natural order as known at the time of the event.
Given the story of a cure performed by Jesus of
Nazareth, I do not see that the questions raised by it
would be any way affected if we were now to discover
scientific means of doing the same thing — unless of
course we had reason to believe that he actually used
some such scientific means. Such a case excepted, it
would seem that whatever is a miracle for its own time
is equally a miracle for posterity, so far as concerns its
unlikeness to the natural order.

Apologists may be right in telling us that we cannot
safely assume that God cannot go outside the natural
order by causing a natural sequence without a natural
antecedent ; but it is not safe to emphasize the point in
the way some of them do, as if their whole case depended
on it. " Law," indeed, is not a constraining force, and
is only made such by a confusion of metaphor. It is
but a symbol summing up such facts as we have observed
hitherto ; and any new fact may require us to amend our
symbol. But the question is not of God's power to go
beyond the natural order, but whether there is reason to

^ Aug. de Gen. ad Lit. vi 13 : Nee ista cum fiunt, contra naturam fiunt,
nisi nobis quibus aliter naturae cursus innotuit ; non autem Deo, cui hoc
est natura quod fecerit.

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 185

think he has actually done so, and on this I must diverge
from some, perhaps many, of the apologists. If we had
perfect knowledge, both of the natural order and of the
facts of history, I am inclined to think we should find
that as a matter of fact such natural order has never
been broken.

This, however, is no more than a verbal concession.
The real question is, What precisely ought we to mean
in this connexion by the natural order ? Supposing an
alleged fact to be contrary thereto, we cannot on that
account pronounce it impossible, unless we have so
defined the natural order as to include in it all things
that are under any circumstances possible. This is not
the usual scientific sense of the word ; but it is the
only sense that will make the objection tenable. Any-
one can see, though all do not remember, the fallacy of
limiting it to such part of the physical order as is known
to us by past experience. The controversy would be
much lightened if the opponents of miracle would
frankly set aside such arguments as tell equally against
a discovery of any sort, or a phenomenon we cannot
verify at our pleasure, like a comet in a hyperbolic
orbit. These may be the arguments of clumsy
thinkers ; but clumsy thinkers are apt to be noisy, and
cannot in any case be omitted from that counting of
heads which appears to be the final test of truth for the
natural man, who hates nothing more than the trouble
of having serious beliefs of his own.

Now in this connexion the natural order does not
mean simply the physical order of things, but that order
as modified by the action of persons ; for even the

186 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

necessitarians who finally resolve such action into the
physical order do not deny that it brings out results,
and that some results are not brought out without it.
Hence no result is contrary to the natural order
unless it cannot be reached by any action of persons.
Now the results which men obtain from the natural
order depend mainly on their knowledge of science. As
the results which the ancients obtained are no measure
of those we ourselves obtain, so these again are no
measure of the results we hope our children will obtain
by a better knowledge of science. Yet if science is true
sympathy with the power behind Nature, it is but im-
perfect and one-sided sympathy. It is imperfect because
it is an uncompleted evolution ; and it is one-sided because
it so poorly represents the moral side implied in the
trustworthiness of that power. Yet such as it is, it
gives us such power over Nature as we possess.

At this point I submit that even the greatest
imaginable victories of science are no measure of the
results a man might obtain, or possibly enable others
to obtain, if he were in perfect sympathy of feeling,
thought, and will with the divine order of the entire
universe, — a character theologically described as without
sin. To put the matter in a concrete form, let us
imagine the story true, that Jesus of Nazareth was
such a man. In that case he must have had power
far greater than our own, and been able to do in a
perfectly natural way many things we cannot do, and
some perhaps which no advance of science that we can
look for would enable us to do. If we think out what
the supposition means, we may find it not unlikely that

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 187

most of the " sigus " ascribed to him would be well with-
in the power of such a man. Nobody doubts that his
vivid sympathy might account for some obscure heal-
ings ; but when once we are oft' the ground of technical
scientific skill we can establish no distinction of kind
between these signs and others which seem to lie further
from common experience. Given such a man, I see
nothing unlikely in the story that he had power to
raise the dead. If it is not our own experience that
Love is stronger than death, the reason may be that
none but such a man can ever wield the fulness of its
power.

But what shall we say of divine action ? Ultimately
it may be " all one act at once " ; but for us men with
our limitations it is like our own, a series of actions in
time. Only under the forms of time can we form any
idea at all of timeless action ; and if the universe is
rational, such idea must be true so far as it goes. If
then God acts in time, his action must be strictly
natural, so far as it is personal action like our own,
so rearranging physical forces as to bring out new
results, and so influencing men that they do freely
what they would not otherwise have done. Such
natural divine action can hardly be pronounced im-
possible if there is any personal divine action at all
in the world ; and though it will not cover alleged
miracles that are trifling or immoral, it may cover
some of a more sober kind, for we cannot take for
granted that it will cause only such natural sequences
as we have seen before. I hardly know how far I
am expressing any general opinion on the matter ; but

188 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

if every alleged miracle of the New Testament were
supposed true, such strictly natural divine action would
seem enough to account for all of them. Nor do I see
that any other action is needed to explain even the
" breaks " of evolution. Life would come from matter,
but from matter as originally moulded by infinite
wisdom and infinite goodness, while matter itself would
in some way beyond the reach of finite wisdom be
evolved from the timeless w^orld.

We may get a side-light on the whole subject by
returning to otir position that man is defined by evolu-
tion as essentially spirit, however conditioned by matter.
If so, the highest embodiment we can imagine for him is
rightly described by St. Paul as a spiritual body (crw/ia
TTvevfxaTLKov), meaning not a body made of spirit, if
such be thinkable, but a body in which spirit has
complete control of matter. And it must be within
God's power to evolve such a body ; for, as Lotze has
shewn, we are not to conceive of God as so strong
that he can overcome the utmost resistance of matter,
but as so related to matter that it cannot resist him
at all. And must not the perfect sympathy of the sin-
less man with the divine order of the universe give him
something of this power, divine and also natural ?

Isolated physical wonders without moral significance
are not worth discussion. If miracle may be supposed
at all, it cannot be supposed given for the trivial
purpose of displaying divine power, for the needless
purpose of proving divine power, or for the impossible
purpose of compelling unwilling belief in something
better than power. Be the wonder what it might,

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 189

something more than a wonder would be needed to
distinguish divine from diabolical. The only reasonable
purpose we can imagine for it, apart from what we must
consider secondary or incidental ends, is to emphasize
by uncommon facts the right and goodness which to us
are less conspicuously declared by the common facts of
experience. To call it more divine or more directly
divine than common facts is meaningless or superstitious;
but in some cases in some stages of history it might
suggest the divine more vividly. Hence the uncommon-
ness of the facts could not be more than a means to the
end ; and the end would be such more vivid suggestion.
We may therefore safely set aside all cases of alleged
miracle which have some other end than this. These
cannot be true ; others may be worth discussion.

It is plainly futile to discuss the possibility of miracle
with anyone who starts from the axiom (avowed or not)
that there is no God, or none of whom anything can be
certainly known ; or that he cannot or will not act in
the world, or that he acts by necessity and not by choice.
Such a man has no common ground with a believer in
that possibility. So long as he holds his axiom the
question is not open for him. If evidence be offered he
cannot seriously approach it. He may go through the
form of discussing it, and give reasons good or bad for
not accepting it ; but so long as he holds his axiom he
is bound to iind such reasons in the face of any evidence
whatever. It is useless to debate surface matters when
they are no more than the outcome of deeper doubts.

A general objection sometimes made is that if many
stories of miracle are confessedly false, there can be no

190 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

certainty about others. This is the ground recently
taken by an eminent student, of whom I wish to say
nothing that is not respectful.^ But I cannot reconcile
this argument with the first rule of investigation, that
everything is to be judged by its own evidence and not
by the evidence of something else. If many charters
have been forged, can we have no certainty about the
Great Charter of King John ?

However, if it be allowed that the possibility of
miracle is not to be summarily rejected without regard
to evidence, we must here particularly notice that some
groups of alleged miracles are presented to us as a
connected series of historical events belonging more
especially to the moral order, and vividly suggestive of
divine right and goodness ; and as such a series they
must be judged, and not otherwise. If we have before
us a theory that these things are true, the only scientific
way of dealing with it is to take it exactly as it stands,
and make sure that we understand it, before we compare
such theory (and not something else) with facts. In
this case it would be a serious fallacy of ignoratio
elenchi if we insisted on discussing them singly as
unconnected marvels, like Huxley's example of the
centaur in the streets of London, or if we laid down
any canons of historical criticism which are not reason-
able tests of the particular phenomena alleged, or if we
left out of consideration the moral significance claimed
for them as parts of a coherent moral scheme.

For instance, I am not aware of any alleged miracle
which might not reasonably be rejected, if it could fairly

^ G. L. Dickinson, in Hibhert Journal.

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 101

be viewed as an event out of relation to others. Thus
the Eesurrection is one thing, if treated as a story of
a Jew who returned from the grave with no particular
result ; quite another when presented as the central event
of history.

Again, it is a common fallacy to suppose that extra-
ordinary events require an extraordinary weight of
evidence to prove them, much as the False Decretals
required seventy-two witnesses to prove a crime against
a bishop, and sifted them with such sweeping objections
that hardly one would have been left unchallenged.
Supposing the alleged miracle morally and otherwise
admissible, so that nothing remains but to examine the
historical evidence for such and such events, the kind
and quantity of such evidence needed to complete the
proof will depend almost entirely on the nature of the
outward fact alleged. Some facts, for instance, are more
likely to be invented than others, and some are more
difficult of observation. Some are so delicate that we
should not be satisfied without skilled evidence ; others
are so evident, or form such a series, that almost any
honest witness will suffice. Thus many tales of appari-
tions which seem honestly told are evident mistakes,
which a competent observer would not have made ; but
when we come to so circumstantial a story as (we will
say) that of Mrs. Veal, we must either accept it as
true or reject it as deliberate invention. No eye-witness
could have made such a series of mistakes. No doubt
M^e make a difference between a fact of weighty meaning
and an unimportant story. But our inference is not.
We want double evidence : it is the very different one,

192 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

We must make doubly sure that we have sufficient
evidence. We may want a margin before we are sure ;
but then we stake life if need be without hesitation on
our conclusion. If an alleged fact is even unique, that
is good ground for caution, but none for scepticism.

There is a similar fallacy of ignoratio elenchi in the

most telling of all arguments — " Miracles do not happen

now." Why should they ? Suppose the contention is,

not that miracles are scattered broadcast over history,

but that they are connected with a certain critical period

in the past. Then what becomes of the objection ? It

can hardly be maintained that a power which is not

alleged to have done these things except for certain

reasons is bound to go on doing them (or cannot help

doing them) when those reasons have ceased to exist.

It is no evasion to point out that past events cannot be

directly verified by present experiment. Nor is the

appeal to history necessarily doubtful. Eoot out once

for all from your mind any lurking idea that historical

evidence is made uncertain by lapse of time. There is

a change when the document is no longer backed up by

living memory ; but after that there is little further

change. If writings are lost or mutilated, whatever

remains, remains exactly what it was at first. If texts

become corrupt in course of time, words drop out of use,

and manners and ways of thinking change, these are

difficulties with which historical criticism can deal

almost as effectively after twenty centuries as after two.

The number of the Beast was exactly the puzzle to

Irenseus that it is to us ; and Augustine's nearness to

the Gospel gave him scarcely any advantages above our

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 193

own for understanding it. Nor do the changes bear
much relation to the lapse of time. The old Greeks are
easier to understand than the men of the Middle Ages ;
and the laws of Hammurabi seem scarcely more obscure
than the Dooms of Alfred. We have more in common
with Pericles and Ctesar than with Karl the Great and
Nicephorus Phocas. The Old Testament bears the stamp
of the unchanging East, and the apostolic age is in many-
ways more modern than the eighteenth century. It is
utter fallacy to imagine, as many do, that history steadily
becomes more uncertain as we trace it backwards into
what are metaphorically called the mists of antiquity.

There is one thing more that ought not to be left
imsaid. It is futile to argue, as many do, that " even
if miracles be supposed true, they prove nothing but
themselves." ^ Is that so ? Judge for yourselves. Let
the story of Jairus' daughter (as interrupted by the
woman with the issue of blood) be supposed true. Will
it not compel us to believe, not simply that Jesus of
Nazareth had power to do this thing, but also that he
shewed much patience and delicacy in doing it ? And
must not such patience and delicacy count for something
in any reasonable opinion about him ? I confess I am
half ashamed to go on laying such simple things before
you ; but the simple things are overlooked, and those
who know most of current controversies will bear me
witness that I am not fighting shadows of my own im-
agination, but answering as best I can the floating
thoughts of thousands.

Our last illustration brings us to the heart of the
^ Thus (not however in these words) Nettleship, Bemains, 104, 105.
VOL. I. — 13

194 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

matter, for we have already seen that patience and
delicacy belong to character and personality, while power
does not. The men of the eighteenth century were
more influenced than they knew by the old Calvinism
in which a God of power took back by predestination
the freedom he seemed to have given in creation ; and
by the older Romanism, in which a God of power was
propitiated by elaborate ceremonial and easy-going
morality. They were still in the after-swell of the great
storm of the Eeformation. But a God of power cannot
be revealed without works of power ; therefore miracle
being a work of power was held indispensable to reve-
lation. In this they were certainly wrong. Their im-
perfect idea of God led them first to empty the " signs "
of their spiritual significance, then to debase the revela-
tion itself to vague moralism and legal fiction. They
forgot that the still small voice may speak more loudly
than the earthquake and the storm, and that the shining
of a saintly face is more divine than works of might.
This is what Jesus of Nazareth meant when he ranked
the raising of the dead below the preaching of a gospel
to the poor.^

It was a clear advance when the science of the nine-
teenth century led men to think of God as law. The
indefinite outline of power was now filled in, if not with
a living Person, at least with a method of working. But
a God of law cannot be revealed except by works of law ;
therefore miracle being a breach of law was held im-
possible in revelation. And this again seems clearly
wrong. Their imperfect idea of God led them first to

^ Mt. xi 6, noting the climax.

INSPIRATION, PROPHECY, MIRACLE 195

limit his action to the physical order, then to put the
physical order in his place. They forgot that persons
are more than things, and that the physical order will
not account even for things.

The eighteenth century was right, in so far as God
has power ; and the nineteenth, in so far as law is the
method of his working : but now we see that there can
be neither law nor power without an intending will
behind ; and the character of that will is not unknown
to us. If religion, science, thought itself are not all a
delusion together, God cannot be other than self-re-
vealing right and goodness, and the " greater and more
perfect tabernacle " ^ where he reveals himself to men
cannot be less than the entire universe of things and
persons in space and time. If divine action is made
the test of miracle, then the universe in all its parts is
one stupendous miracle. If " direct " divine action, no
one form of divine action is more direct than another.
If breach of law, we never can be certain whether any
events whatever are miraculous or not. If the test is
to be real, it must be a moral test based on the fact
that God deals with men as moral beings. He is the
head, not only of the physical order of things, but of a
moral order of persons ; and the two, being both of his
creation, must form one organic whole, yet so that the
physical order has neither sense nor meaning apart
from the moral or spiritual which governs it and causes
all its movements. Therefore we have no right so to
limit God's action by physical law at present known to
us as to foreclose the possibility that he may please to

1 Hebr. ix 11.

196 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

reveal himself to moral persons in ways which after all
do not otherwise transcend the physical order of things
than does the ordinary action of our own will, though
they transcend it in particular manifestations unfamiliar
to beings of finite knowledge and finite wisdom.
Whether he has in fact so done is a question of history
on which we cannot enter here. All that Natural
Theology can tell us is that there is no reason why it
should not be decided on historical evidence like other
historical questions, for we have found nothing of weight
in the a 2>rio7'i presumption so often brought against it.

LECTURE VIII.

POSSIBLE METHODS OF EEVELATION.

I.

We can put our question now : How far can we state
beforehand the purpose and chief end of a special or
central revelation ? At first sight all is thick darkness.
God will send it, it will do his pleasure and not return
to him void : and that is all that can be said. So there
are many who tell us that we ought not to form expecta-
tions, but simply to wait till it comes, before we begin
to study it. There is a side of truth in this view, for
expectations have often been made too definite; but
how can we recognize it when it does come if we form
no expectations at all ? Surely we must have some idea
beforehand what sort of a message may be divine, and
what cannot be divine. A central or special revelation
is at any rate a revelation of some sort ; therefore we
must expect it to be serious, rational, and moral. Even
William Law would have granted so much, though he
rightly objected to the presumption of dictating at what
time or to what persons it shall be given, or what shall
be its precise contents. These questions may be quite
above us. But allowing all this, and remembering that
there must be an element of mystery in revelation as in

197

198 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

all knowledge, and very likely a deeper mystery in a
special or central revelation, it does not follow that we
can make no forecast at all of its general character.

In the first place, it is by supposition a revelation
which goes beyond the general revelation through the
natural and the spiritual order as that revelation appears
to the generality of mankind. This fact of itself tells
us a good deal. We have twice already discussed the
probability of such a revelation, and both times found
that much might be said on either side. The funda-
mental fact of experience is that we have done that
which is evil, and disobeyed the moral law which was
set before us. What then ? If our first impulse was
to suppose that God would of his goodness give us any
further help we wanted, our easy optimism was checked
by the fear that our sin may have brought on us his
permanent displeasure. Yet however we might deserve
this, there was again a possibility that the misery we
have brought on ourselves by sin might of itself be a
successful appeal to perfect goodness. The more we
looked at this last point the stronger it seemed ; but
upon the whole we agreed not to make the venture of
faith that time, but to leave the question open.

Now, if such a revelation has actually been given
(which we are now supposing), we know for certain that
we have not permanently estranged him from us. Our
sin he cannot but hate as rebellion against the order he
has made : to ourselves we learn that he is good not-
withstanding. We might have hoped it from his
continued goodness in the natural world, where the sun
rises on the evil and the good, and the rain falls on the

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 199

just and on the unjust. We might also have hoped that
if mercy is not unknown to men, neither is it impossible
to God. But a faint and chequered hope, more fitful
dream than reasoned thought, is a poor thing to set
against the bodings of conscience, the iron bonds of
natural sequence, the overwhelming horrors of remorse.
Yet if there be such a revelation, our hope is true. If
God speaks in it, he can only speak in mercy, and the
first word of it will have to be, So God loved the world.
Had it gone on, that he gave the Koran to Mahomet,
and sent him forth to preach life and paradise to all
that would receive him, this might very well have been
primd facie the special revelation we were looking for,
though we could not have said more without knowing
something about the Koran. In any case, such a revela-
tion must be a message of goodness, in the sense that
God's goodness is not an incidental fact, or one fact
among others, but the ground and meaning, core and
centre, of the whole.

In the next place, though its immediate occasion must
be the fact that men have gone wrong in spite of the
general revelation as generally known, we cannot safely
make this the only reason for such revelation. It might
possibly have been given even if men had not gone
wrong, though very likely not in the same form. We
cannot say but that the action on God's part best fitted to
deal with the broken unity of will and conscience might
also have been best fitted to deal with man if he had
never gone astray. So while such revelation must be the
answer of God's goodness to the misery of sin, we cannot
shut out the possibility that it may have further aims.

200 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

We can see some of these, if the evolution is not to stop
short of the ideal ; but of others it is not unlikely that
we are wholly ignorant.

"We may take it that if there be a special revelation
God will deal in it with sin. Physical evil, so far as it
is not complicated with sin, is his creation, and calls for
no special action on his part ; nor would the satisfaction
of our curiosity about another w^orld be worthy of any.
But sin is our creation, not his, for what he gave us
in freedom was not licence to do wrong — only the power
of doing wrong involved in the power of doing right.
Moreover, if there is any forward evolution possible for
us as beings of the spiritual order, sin plainly bars the
way. Whatever the future may have in store for us,
we cannot receive it till we are on better terms with the
order of things. Therefore in a special revelation God
will deal with sin, whatever further ends he may have in
view.

How he will deal with sin we cannot presume to say
precisely beforehand, not only because we do not know
those possible further ends, but for the still more serious
reason that we do not fully know how the world appears
to him. We are creatures of space and time, and our
sight is limited by sense and dimmed by sin. Beings
every way imperfect cannot scan the universe with the
eyes of perfect goodness and perfect rightness wielding
perfect wisdom and perfect power. Nevertheless, finite
knowledge need not be untrue. An observer in London
will see neither so much nor so well as if he moved his
telescope to the clearer mountain air of Teneriffe or
Arequipa ; but what he does see need not be illusion.

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 201

So in an infinitely higher way God must see all that wc
see, and an infinity more, and see with perfect clearness
in their final meaning things we see dimly or not at all ;
but what we do see need not be illusion. So far as we
are his image — and all thought is meaningless unless to
some extent we are — we must in virtue of that affinity
be able to see things to some extent as he sees them.
True thought of ours is the deciphering of his thought,
true goodness of ours is the copying of his goodness, and
conscience is his voice within us, so that if we choose
to follow it our will can struggle after his, and find in
his service perfect freedom. It is neither finiteness nor
sense, but sin alone that mars the image of God within
us, and makes us the failures we feel we are.

If therefore we essay to see the world as it appears
to God, our task is not the infinite presumption it may
seem. We see in part, and know in part ; but some
things we do see, and some too we certainly know.
Inconceivably as the infinity beyond our reach might
enlarge our thoughts, if human weakness could bear to
know it, it would not utterly change them. There
must be some fixed points, as in a child's knowledge,
for we should learn that the words of our profoundest
wisdom are like the lispings of a child. As the child
knows the things he needs to know, so do we ; and if
when he grows older he finds the world immensely
larger and more wonderful than he imagined, he does
not find it essentially different. If he hears of other
families and foreign countries, they are still families
like his own, and realms of land and water like his
own. The sun shines on all, and the freemasonry of

202 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

human thought makes him more or less at home in
all. Nowhere does he come upon enchanted ground,
with other laws than those of common day. He never
meets with gods ascending from the sea, or hears the
words of might on which infernal powers wait. Go
where he may, he treads the soil of middle earth, and
meets but mortals like himself.

Like this it must be with his elders also. The
unknown may be — must be — far greater and more
wonderfid than we imagine ; but if it is of the same
creation as the known, it must be so far like it as to
contain nothing finally irrational or inconsistent with
perfect rightness and perfect goodness. As the thought
in man which traces God's thought in the natural order
makes us more or less at home throughout the world of
nature, so the conscience which follows God's thought
in the higher order makes us more or less at home
throughout the world of spirit. Be the wonders of the
unknown what they may, we shall never come to an
enchanted ground where wrong is blameless, or malice
duty. The laws of truth and right can no more fail
than those of space and time. Go where we may, it is
God's world still, and we know generally what it must
be like ; and therefore we know to some extent how
the whole must appear to God's all-seeing eye.

Yet even here there is a metaphor that will mislead
us if we are not careful. Though it must be true that
he is the high and mighty, the King of kings and Lord
of lords, who doth from his throne behold all the
dwellers upon earth, this cannot be the whole truth.
His view of the world cannot be taken simply from

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 203

the outside, after the deistic fashion ; though neither
can we simply place him inside it as one person among
others. He must be not only its outside sovereign
but its inner life, working with and in the forces of
Nature, and that not simply as one force which modifies
the resultant of the rest, but as a living Person sus-
staining and preserving Nature, and in sustaining and
preserving ever creating it afresh ; and as a living
Person guiding persons, working in them and through
them, and by his voice in conscience ever labouring to
call them back from the untruth and emptiness of sin.
If conscience is real, he is not an idle spectator of the
deadly struggle which threatens to wreck the moral
issue of the universal evolution. He is himself our
leader in the battle, ever pouring fresh courage into us
and rallying our broken forces to the conflict, rejoicing
with us in our victories and grieving for us, if not with
us, in our failures and defeats. If even sinners can
kindle with enthusiasm over enterprises pure and high,
and flash down their indignation on doings base and
vile, shall only God be cold and passionless ? Is he
the giver of all goodness, as on any theistic theory he
must be, but himself a dweller in selfish bliss ? A
machine may be very admirable in its way, but a God
who cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities
is lower than a dog who can. The philosophers never
made a more disastrous blunder than when they thought
to magnify his dignity by setting him above the battle,
like a Xerxes looking down on Salamis, instead of in
its midst. This is what we come to from the dreary
sophism of the via negativa, which has been the curse

204 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

of speculative thought from the Upanishads and Plotinus
to the monks and Herbert Spencer.

To God's all-seeing eye the universe as a whole must
appear a true realization of his purpose, so far as that
is yet developed. The vast substructure of the physical
order has been built up in the course of ages with
unfailing accuracy, and has now completed one great
cycle of its history. The planets in their orbits and
the dewdrops in the morning sun fulfil his word ; and
though physical evil is terrible to men who can brood
over it, the animal world is notwithstanding a bright
and joyous world. The physical order cannot of itself
go wrong, for it is entirely subject to him, except so far
as he has given freedom of action to other moral beings.
Thus there is no room for failure in the universe except
by the wrong action of those other beings. If there be
devils, they are defined as devils by such wrong action.
But the only failure certainly known to us is our own.
The evolution of the ages went wrong at the point
where it passed in man from the necessity of the
physical order to the freedom of the spiritual ; and if
this wrong is not in some way righted it means the
wreck of all. Measure first the prerogative and dignity of
man by the length and complication of the vast evolu-
tion which has not only ended in him as it has ended
in all existing species, but led up to him as the completed
issue of the entire cycle, and the centre of a higher
order than the physical. Of such a being even the
daring words of the writer to the Hebrews are not
incredible, that " not unto angels did he subject the
world to come," but to man. At all events it is evident

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 205

that the issues of the new order in this world will be
shaped more and more by the new force of human choice,
and less and less by the old force of natural selection,
which men are more and more deflecting and reversing.
Man, in short, is the appointed guide and ruler of the
new cycle, God's viceroy knowing good and evil, and
gifted with the power of creating both. So much the
greater must be the disaster, if he has gone aside and
created sin. He is a ruler still, but a ruler out of
sympathy with the true estate and order of the world
entrusted to him.

If then there is any word from God beyond the
general revelation as generally understood, we cannot
doubt that he will deal in it with sin. If we cannot
presume to say precisely how he will deal with it.
Natural Theology does warrant us in saying some things.
It is not likely that he will suddenly sweep the sinners
out of existence, or compel them to be good. Either of
these plans would seem a confession of failure — that
he began to build, and was not able to finish. Either
of them (supposing the former thinkable) would be a
discontinuous leap downward and backward from the
new order of freedom to the old order of necessity, and
therefore a complete abandonment of the method of
evolution. Such a blow would be destruction, not
development, and if it came at all, as sheer "might
from the Almighty " ^ it would have to come.

If the sinners were swept out of existence or forced
to be good, there might be an end of sin ; and if the
process was gradual, there need be no breach of con-

1 Joel i 15 : «3; n^a nir?

20 G THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

tinuity ; but sin would in either ease be rather put out
of sight than cured, and the mischief it has already done
in the world and among men would remain to be further
dealt with. If indeed we consider the destructive work
of sin on other men and on the order of nature, we may
be tempted to think that the larger part of the work
would still remain to be done.

It would be much the same if men were frightened
into good conduct, with the further difficulty that unless
their fright amounted to actual compulsion it might not
even diminish the amount of sin. It might suppress
bad acts ; but no mere fright can touch the evil will.
This is of itself a fatal objection to the old idea that
hell is a deterrent from sin ; for if sin be in will, and
only so far in acts as they express will, it is clear that
no man ever sinned a sin the less for fear of hell. The
utmost that can be granted is that as bad actions confirm
bad habits, something might be gained if men could be
frightened out of them, though much might also be lost
if the danger of wrong action stimulated wrong desire,
as it commonly does. At best, however, the gain would
in no case amount to any cure for sin or for the
smallest of its evils.

Crude ideas like these which mask the difficulty
instead of overcoming it, assume that God is essentially
power, and that his methods of government are those
of an Eastern sultan. The sultan is very good to his
people, and may overlook a good deal of disorder ; but
he is capable of ordering a massacre if he is provoked
too far. Better wipe out a village than have it in
chronic disturbance. If he does not go that length he

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 207

will be content with forcing it to keep the peace, and
perhaps inflicting tremendous punishments at his
pleasure on some of the rebels. This, I think, is no
unfair account of the method still ascribed to God by
some who count themselves correct believers. But the
analogies of human government must always be
imperfect when applied to a God of perfect goodness.
Yet even so, they seem to point to something better
than this. The best of kings may have to put down
a revolt and punish some of the offenders according to
law ; but he counts the use of force an evil necessity,
punishes no further than he is obliged, and never thinks
his work thoroughly done till he has turned his rebels
into loyal subjects. If an earthly king can try to do
as much as this, we may be sure that God will do no
less than this.

Yet how can he do it ? Mere preaching is as useless
as mere terror, unless there be some power in the
message itself ; and it is not easy to see what sort of
a message would have power to turn man's heart from
sin. A philosophy might touch reason, a religion
feeling, a law action ; but none of them would appeal
to human nature as a whole. We are coming now to
the dark places of Natural Theology, and shall have to
pick our way with double caution, and with a sobering
consciousness of our ignorance. Yet we are not without
experience in the work of recovering them that are out
of the way ; and that experience would seem to suggest
certain lines of action as possibly hopeful. The problem
of revelation may be infinitely harder than our common
rescue work in the slums, but it cannot be entirely

208 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

different in kind. Whether any of these lines of action
or all of them together will suffice is more than we
know ; and whether or in what manner God may have
used any of them is a question of history which a
Gilford Lecturer must leave to others. But in any case
and against all difficulties we are bound in all theistic
hope to hold fast our trust that perfect goodness is not
without the means of overcoming sin. To give up that
hope would be intellectual as well as moral suicide.

Personal influence is the first of these lines of action,
and the chief, for the others depend on it. When we
have to reclaim and train to better things some degraded
creature who is living in rebellion against the order of
society, we begin with neither the teachings of philosophy
nor the services of religion, nor with the commands of
a law. These may all have their use later, and the
last in particular may have a provisional use from the
first, in keeping him from temptation, and temptation
from him ; but our first and principal aim is to get
him under the influence of a better man than himself.
Till this is done, practically nothing is done. Teaching
is useless without example, feeling is empty till it has
gathered round a living person, and obedience to right
commonly begins with loyalty to one we love. So it
begins in the home ; and if the home has failed to do
its work, we have to provide some other guiding
influence. For a little distance on the downward course
we may possibly be able to right ourselves ; but we
soon reach a point where there is no recovery without
the gracious drawing of one who loves us more worthily
than we love ourselves. Nothing else can give hope to

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 209

the despairing and self-respect to the degraded. Such
drawing requires rather kindliness and sense of duty
than commanding genius. Many a man has been
conquered by the winning goodness of his intellectual
inferiors ; and sometimes the innocence of a child has
been the salvation of its elders from evil ways. A vast
amount of experience has gone to shape the rescue
agencies around us ; and it has shaped them into
agencies for bringing personal influence to bear. Any
other aims they may have are either helps to this or
likely to prove mistaken. Nor is personal influence
limited to personal intercourse, though that is its most
vivid form. It may work for ages when embodied in
writings or institutions. The good and bad effects of
Buddhism and Islam largely represent the personal
influence of their founders ; and so far as Christian
churches have done good work on the face of the earth,
they seem to have done it by bringing men under the
personal influence of Christ. In this the student of his-
tory will read the secret of their strength, and in lower
ideals and meaner aims the causes of their weakness.

Personal influence, good or bad, comes from our real
selves. Our concealments and hypocrisies are never
very successful in disguising it, and in the long run
fail entirely. This is why it is so great a force in the
world. A man of clear and resolute purpose has a
marvellous power of overcoming opposition, even when
his purpose is a bad one. But with equal resolution and
a lofty aim that overawes the consciences of all around
him he is irresistible — at least for the moment. The
time-servers, the cynics, the schemers, and the rest of
VOL. I. — 14

210 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

the weaklings count for nothing in the day of decision.
He may have great faults, he may make great mistakes,
he may see but one thing, though that he will see with
intense and vivid clearness ; but he will be a living and
creative power. Eusebius saw dangers which Athanasius
overlooked; but Athanasius is the hero of the fourth
century. Erasmus had more culture and a wider view
than Luther ; but Luther is the giant of the German
Eeformation.

But the personal influence of such a man is more
than a living soul. It is a quickening spirit. As the
nature of life in the natural order is to gender life, so
also is it in the spiritual. As fire kindles fire, leaping
from one point to another, so spreads the sacred flame
across the barriers of selfish pride and selfish interest.
Enthusiasms may die away, scribes may take the place
of prophets, and Pharisees may sit in Moses' seat ; but
the memory of that which once has been remains a
power in the land.

The mountain peaks are made of common rocks, and
the great scenes of history are no more than the open
manifestation of the common forces of common life.
The quiet man in a cottage, the patient woman at her
daily toil, the very invalid on a couch, may be a
quickening spirit as truly as the prophet on whose
word a nation hangs. The power which draws the
outcast to better things is the same that lifts common
men above themselves. The purpose is the same, the
method is the same ; only the difficulties are a little
greater. I^et us look at them.

There is no surer sign of a degraded character than

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 211

a vague habit of suspecting our neighbours without
definite and reasonable grounds. In general we judge
them by ourselves till we see reason to the contrary,
so that if we are ourselves false or vile, our impulse
is to set down the fairest of actions to the foulest of
motives, and in the noblest of men to see no more
than the most successful of hypocrites. This is our
hrst difficulty with the undesirable — if we may slightly
generalize a word of recent origin. He is so used to
selfishness in himself and others that the unselfish
kindness of a better man comes to him as a surprise.
At first he suspects a cunning design, or simply does
not understand it. He may take his good things
willingly enough ; but he needs time to get over his
recurring doubt whether we are quite disinterested, and
a much longer time before he fully realizes that we
do not want simply to relieve his distress, but to make
him strive to be a better man.

For here comes in a second and greater difficulty.
The powers which ought to have been developed in
healthy life have been weakened by rebellion against
the order of things. The undesirable is commonly a
poor creature in mind and body. He may have picked
up a good deal of knowledge, though by this time it is
usually rusting, and he may have plenty of cunning for
base purposes ; but outside these limits he is likely to
be stupid. Feeling and conscience are in most things
callous ; and if the worst men sometimes have strange
scruples and points of honour and touches of sensibility,
such inconsistencies only shew that they have not
entirely succeeded in making devils of themselves. Least

212 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

of all can the will escape debasement. If the inclesirable
has any firm purpose left, it must be bad. He will
be like Milton's Belial,

To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful.

A few of these men are active enough in pursuing base
ends, though their plans are rather clever than far-seeing ;
for like Napoleon they overlook the moral forces, and
the moral forces usually foil them in the end. But
they are more commonly weak as water, yielding to
the first temptation, and shielding themselves behind
the first lie that comes to hand. Even when we have
won their confidence and made them as willing as such
creatures can be to lead a better life, they are continu-
ally falling back from sheer weakness. The old temp-
tation was too much for them ; yet they are likely to
resent the discipline which keeps them out of its way.
Still, it is much easier to keep them right by undertaking
their entire guidance, like the Jesuits in Paraguay, than
to teach them to keep themselves right. It may be
long before the best of them learn to stand alone ; and
some of them never learn to stand alone at all.

If it is the noblest of all work, it is also the hardest,
to make a new man of the erring and fallen. The
change is rightly compared in some religions to a new
birth. It calls on us as guides, for wisdom and
sympathy, unquenchable hope and never failing patience,
not only of the lower sort which bears with toil and
suffering, but of that higher which is not soured by
failures and disappointments. These are qualities
which cannot be acquired on a sudden, or hired for

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 2 IP.

a consideration. Unless the work itself inspires them,
it cannot be done ; but if we do it with all the strength
of heart and soul and mind, it will inspire them. So
those tell us with one voice who have a right to speak.
They tell us that there is no work so full of suffering
and disappointment, but none where suffering and dis-
appointment are so transfigured into pure and lofty joy.
Those who patiently receive them find that they have
entertained angels unawares. The suffering and dis-
appointment cannot be spared, for redeeming power is
just in these. The one thing which more than any
other is a charm to reach the erring and the fallen
is the sight of others bearing willingly and lovingly
the consequences of his own misdeeds. Suffering for
others is a law of nature, and the loving acceptance of
it is the fountain of the higher life.

The world has an easy standard, for it is content with
forbidding certain actions as harmful to society ; but if
we take the higher standard of our own conscience, I am
afraid we shall all find ourselves more or less of un-
desirables. If any one fact in life is clear and undeniable,
it is that by our own fault we come far short of what
we might be. Whether we do wrong boldly, or whether
we make believe that it is right, or at any rate only a
little wrong, we cannot do it without debasing conscience
and mind and will together. If conscience admits
unright, our sense of right is dulled ; if mind makes
excuses for it, our perception of truth is dimmed ; if the
will consents to it, our power of resistance is weakened
for the next temptation. Our difference from the
undesirable is not so much that we are morally better,

214 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

as that we avoid certain offences against society. But
other forms of wrong-doing debase character in the same
way, and perhaps quite as much. The man who never
cherishes an unselfish thought is no better than the husk
of a man ; but if his actions pass muster, the world re-
ceives him without hesitation as a decent and respectable
person. The world is right in doing so : the wrong is
when we take its judgments of the needs of society for
judgments of men. It may be that the open sins of
sense we sin like beasts are less destructive to character
than the sins of mind we sin like devils. The drunkard
in the street may be less deeply depraved than the great
leader of thought who has gambled away his conscience.

At all events, we Pharisees are so far like the
Publicans that we cannot lift ourselves to a higher moral
level without much the same helps. It is not excep-
tional depravity but common human weakness that calls
for some gracious personal influence to set right our
conscience, to brace our will, and even to clear our mind.
That influence may come directly from one we love, or
it may reach us indirectly from writings or through
other men, or it may be the cherished memory of those
whom death has parted from us ; but in any case it
must be an influence of human goodness, for it seems
plain from experience that we cannot learn goodness to
much purpose except from goodness in our fellow-men.

If then God should deal with sin, these are the lines
of action which Natural Theology would seem to indicate
as hopeful. Whether he will follow them is more than
we can presume to say. There may be hindrances, and
there may be a more excellent way unknown to us.

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 215

Whether as a matter of fact he has followed them is a
question for the alleged particular revelations. All that
can be said from the standpoint of Natural Theology is,
that any such revelation which represents him as follow-
ing them represents him as working on the deepest lines
of human nature known to us, and is therefore so far
perfectly credible.

Mediation must be a necessary part of any divine
plan for dealing with sin, if there is meaning in the
social order where man learns good and evil chiefly from
his fellow-men. We must have the mediation at least
of the prophet who speaks for God to men, and declares
the divine significance of human thoughts and natural
facts. A few systems, like Islam and Deism, seem con-
tent with this, as if mere preaching of truth were all
that is needed. But if the analogy of ordinary rescue
work is at all to be trusted, we shall be more inclined to
follow religions generally in thinking that such divine
plan will also include the mediation of the priest who
speaks to God for men, and lays before him not only the
needs of the natural life, but ever more and more the
aspirations and struggles of a moral nature fast bound
in sin but seeking to be freed from its bondage. Sin
may be deeply rooted, and there are some who scarcely
care to look below it ; yet far below it spreads the real
deep of human nature — that deep from which we cry
for peace with the true order of things, and feel that all
efforts of our own are vain to deliver us from our
bondage. But the priest can give us no real help with
his rites and ceremonies. They may set forth our need ;
but they cannot even make known to God anything

216 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

unknown to him before, much less turn aside the natural
consequences of sin. The only direct use possible for
them is in moral action on ourselves ; and that they can
only have by setting forth and vividly expressing to us
the loving self-devotion either of the priest himself, or of
others for whom he stands, or more likely both, for one
who is no more than a representative is a prophet, not a
priest. Even the secondary priest who chiefly stands
for another must himself have a measure of priestly
self-sacrifice, if he is to do any priestly work at all.

Such mediation must therefore include the suffering
of the innocent for the guilty. That which is the living
power of all our own rescue work can hardly be wanting
in the divine. But here we must pause to get our
meaning clear. Suffering for the guilty may be for
their benefit, but cannot be in their stead. In a very
rough and inaccurate way it may be said that the rescuer
toils and sorrows instead of the rescued, for without that
toil and sorrow there could be no rescue. He toils and
sorrows, and the guilty escapes toil and sorrow ; and if
that were all, the rescuer might be said to suffer in his
stead. But the one toil and sorrow has little likeness
to the other, except that it is a consequence of the same
sin. There is not much relation of quantity between
them ; and in quality they differ entirely. A man
cannot bear instead of another more than some of the
physical consequences of his evil-doing. He may give
up time or trouble or money to set them right for him,
but he cannot take on him the bad health which it may
cause ; far less the sense of guilt and weakening of
character which it certainly will cause. His troubles.

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 217

liowever great, are different in character from those of
the guilty. Least of all can he take upon himself the
condemnation which right-minded men must pronounce
on the wrong-doer, and cannot pronounce on another.
If this be vicarious suffering, then vicarious suffering is
common ; but in any case vicarious punishment is pure
injustice, and vicarious guilt pure nonsense.

To give a concrete illustration : there are various
objections good or bad to the general belief of the
Christians that Jesus of Nazareth died for us, in the
sense of for our benefit (vTrep rjixwv, as always in the
New Testament). But if we set these aside for a
moment, there are further objections to the particular
belief of some Christians, that he died in our stead
{avrl rjiJiSiv, which is never found in the New Testa-
ment ^), and these further objections are not simply
difficulties which might be explained, but sheer con-
fusions of thought which no explanation can remove.
If then there be mediation for men, it must be generally
for their benefit ; and we cannot say that it is in
their stead, except in the very inaccurate way we have
indicated.

At this point two great questions rise before us —
questions of the utmost difficulty, but questions which
we cannot put aside. If we cannot answer them we
can at any rate find the limits of our knowledge, and
see whether Natural Theology points towards one answer
rather than another. Indications that are far from con-

^ Mt. XX 28 : \vTpov avrl iroWQiv is no real exception, for the avrl
belongs to the metaphor of ransom, and will not bear any more precise
meaning.

218 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

elusive in themselves may still enable us to say that one
theory has a better a 'priori yjosition than another.

Will then the mediation be singular or plural ? Will
it be one priest acting for mankind, or many priests
acting for men ? Certainly the latter. It rests on a
broad analogy, presents no evident diihculties, and cannot
in any case be dispensed with. The second Isaiah's
conception, if it be rightly given as that of an ideal
Israel the Servant of the Lord, whose sufferings were for
the healing of the nations, is not untrue to human
nature. Such a mediation might or might not be
sufficient, and as a matter of fact it might be untrue ;
but we could not say beforehand that a divine plan
might not take some such form. But given a class of
mediators, the question may still be asked, whether such
class can be summed up in an individual historically
representing its ideal. If such an individual be possible,
he would seem to represent the idea of mediation more
perfectly than a number of mediators.^ It is not divine
power that he would need, but a perfect manhood in
perfect sympathy with everything divine, and therefore
with everything in man but sin — though he would
understand even sin better by resistance to it than other
men by experience of it.- Besides this, the spirit which

' This is St. Paul's argument. Gal. iii 19, that the double mediation of
angels and Moses is inferior to that of Christ just because it is double.

^ This is very clearly put by the writers of the New Testament.
Though the mediator is represented as a divine Person, the work of
mediation is always connected with his perfect manhood. The mediator
is (1 Tim. ii 5) a man, Christ Jesus. It is the Son of Man (Mark ii 10)
who has authority on earth to forgive sins, tlie Son of Man (Mark xiii
26), who comes to judgment, the Son of Man (John vi 27) who gives the
bread of life. The Person is divine, but the work is always human.

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 219

would have to animate the class of mediators must in
any case be accounted for, and may perhaps be most
easily accounted for as the reflection of some one supreme
example, such as tlie Buddha or the Christ. But if
Natural Theology seems to point more or less in this
direction, it also raises difficulties which it cannot solve.
From the standpoint of Natural Theology it is not easy
to see how the work of any one man could have the
universal significance and universal power that is needed
for such a work. For this purpose he would seem to
require some deeper organic connexion with his fellow-
men than can be allowed to a man who is no more than
one among others. But when we come to such a
conception as this we get beyond the scope of Natural
Theology, and must leave the further discussion of it
to the alleged special revelations, premising only that
Natural Theology leaves the question open. Upon the
whole, a class of mediators working with self-sacrificing
energy certainly seems required ; but on such considera-
tions as we have before us we cannot venture to decide
whether they will each be an independent centre of
rescue, or whether they may not all draw their energies
from the personal influence of some one supreme and
central mediator.

The other question is likewise difficult, and closely
connected with one that cannot well be asked on grounds
of Natural Theology. So we must note carefully what
it is. It is not whether the reversal of sin will require
self-sacrifice on God's part, but simply whether Natural
Theology has anything to say on the possibility of such
self-sacrifice as is ascribed to him by some religions.

220 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

The first question involves things so evidently beyond
us that it can hardly be asked without presump-
tion; but the second is quite within our reach. We arc
not concerned with the fact, if fact it be, of self-
sacrifice on God's part, but with its possibility, and with
that only in a general way, without reference to any
particular form it may be supposed to have taken.

There can be no self-sacrifice without freedom to act,
and goodness to inspire the action. The idea is therefore
unmeaning to those who think of God in terms of
necessary law, and impious to those who make inscrut-
able power the chief attribute of deity. Thus Islam
has always rejected it with abhorrence ; and Western
Christendom has never been able to reconcile a funda-
mental belief that God is power with a fundamental
fact that So God loved the world. Indeed the belief
and the fact are flatly contradictory, and cannot be
held together in clear and full consciousness of both.
Whichever of them we choose to guide our thought, the
other must be suppressed if it is not to become a
disturbing force, and the more disturbing and confusing
the more clearly we apprehend it. Very commonly the
Christian fact has been subordinated to the Muslim
belief ; but it has never ceased to influence even those
degraded forms of Christian thought which without formally
denying it practically tolerate it only as an occasional
eccentricity of the mystics.

Setting aside such meaningless conceptions of God as
inscrutable power or necessary law, we fall back on that
of perfect Tightness and perfect goodness. We might
ourselves be slow to suggest that the reversal of sin may

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 221

require self-sacrifice on God's part ; but others have
suggested it before us, and there is much evidence that
their belief is not to be summarily declared incredible.
Consider first the peculiar dignity which man may claim
in virtue of that likeness to God without which all
thought would be futile — a dignity further indicated by
the vastness and complexity of the evolution leading up
to him. On a far grander scale of space and time, it
reminds us of the stately march of Eome to the empire
of the world —

Tauta3 molis erat, Romanam condere genlein.

Next consider the wreck and ruin man has brought on
himself and on the world by going aside and creating sin.
Then listen to the voice of conscience that God is not an
idle spectator of the deadly strife that bids fair to wreck
the work of the ages. And if such a crisis as this has
never arisen before in the earth's long history, there is
nothing incredible in the assertion of some religions that
he has dealt with it by means he never used before.

But how far can Natural Theology tell us beforehand
what these means may be ? Is there a charm in earth or
heaven that can touch the roots of sin ? Omnipotence
has none. The tempest and the earthquake and the
fire will pass in vain before us. They may rend the
mountains and break the rocks in pieces, but they will
never touch the heart of man. Personal influence would
seem to be the only power that can do this, — at any
rate it is the only power we ever see doing it, and the
only power we can seriously imagine capable of doing
it. If the ways of rescue are almost as various as the

222 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

ways of error, they all come back to this. But the
personal influence that brings back the wanderer is the
charm of winning goodness ; and there is no goodness
without unwavering loyalty to right and stern self-
sacrifice in loving toil. We can do no good to others
but at the cost of something to ourselves. If virtue
goes out of us, we shall know it; and the more goes
out of us, the more we are likely to feel it. Nor can
we do any real good even to ourselves without self-
sacrifice. If life lies chiefly in relations to others, all
selfishness being disregard of those relations is so much
weakness and lowering of true vitality. Where does
the pulse of life beat higher than in the man who perils
it for others, and lays it down if need be in the proud
assurance that it has not been lived in vain ? And this
need and joy of self-sacrifice is no result of imperfection,
but flows from the very nature of man as man standing
in relation to God and man. As one said in the olden
time. He that loveth his life is destroying it ; and he
that hateth his life in this world, to life eternal shall he
keep it safe. The first clause at all events is profoundly
true, whatever we may think of the second. ,

But if self-sacrifice is the law for man as man, and
therefore as the image of God, can we extend it to God
himself ? I must confess that I for one dare no such
thing without some clearer warrant than we can get
from Natural Theology ; but if others have done it,
neither can I say on grounds of Natural Theology that
they are wrong.^ There is a good deal that seems to

^ John Caird, Giffwd Lecture, 157. If man cannot be explained
without ascribing to his nature a divine element, it follows that the

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 223

point in this direction ; and so far as I can see, nothing
clearly forbids it but a view of the divine which is
plainly unsound. The highest ideal we can form of joy
is not the monotonous bliss of self-centred perfection,
but the perfection of self-sacrifice. If there is no more
toil in the ideal state, it is only because the toil is
transfigured into the joy of willing service ; and if there
is no more sorrow, the reason is that we no longer run
counter to the order of things ; but the order of things
expressing God's nature may still require self-sacrifice in
all moral beings from the lowest to the highest.

If God has limited the undefined possibilities of
omnipotence, first by giving properties to matter which
he will not break through, then by giving freedom to
men which he will not overrule by force, there is nothing
of itself incredible in the idea that he may have limited
them a third time and more narrowly by some further
act of self-sacrifice for the recovery of the world's true
order from the sin which is overthrowing it.

Suppose then some of the alleged revelations were to
present certain historic facts as evidence of self-sacrifice
on God's part for the reversal of sin. We might very
well join issue that the facts were false, or that they
would not bear the inference; but the idea that God
might possibly act in this way is entirely true to the
known order of things. By the highest of all examples
it would set the seal of heaven on that unselfishness
which is the true life of men ; by the highest of all

divine nature cannot be understood without ascribing to it a human
element. A relation cannot be essential on one side and only accidental
or arbitrary ou the other.

224 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

assurances it would give us the absolute and final
certainty of God's goodness for which the deepest needs
of human nature cry ; and with the mightiest of all
motives it would offer to common men that strength of
moral purpose which so few can win from science or
philosophy. Whether it be false or true in fact, the
idea is at least profoundly true to everything we know
of life, and everything we know of man.

There is one thing more to add. Would not such a
revelation be reasonable and consistent if it summed up
all ethics in true thankfulness for such supreme assur-
ance ? And no thankfulness is true unless it fills our
hearts and guides our life ; mere words are nothing.
We know its power in common life to lift us above our
baser selves. So far and so long as a man is genuinely
thankful he cannot be anything else than true and pure
and unselfish. Might not such a revelation quite
reasonably declare that in thankfulness for such a benefit
as this, if only it be real, there is a power strong enough
to overcome the spirit of rebellion ?

LECTURE IX.

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION.

II.

We may get an instructive light on the whole question
by taking it for awhile from the other side, asking not
so much what God is likely to give as what man seems
to need. Taking him then as we find him, in a state of
rebellion against the order of things, and subject to the
three great evils of ignorance, guilt, and division thereupon
ensuing, we ask what sort of outward helps may be
needed to give him the possibility of peace with the
order of things, and specially with himself and with his
fellow-men. The possibility only, because omnipotence
itself can give him no more. If his will is forced, he
becomes a machine instead of a man ; and if it is not, he
can always insist on going his own bad way.

These needs of human nature may be studied either
in the average man, who is the easier object lesson for
us, or in the best man, who feels them more acutely, and
may be supposed to know more of their meaning. But
either way will bring us to nearly the same result; for
even genius, in religion as elsewhere, cannot do more
than see clearly what common men see more or less
obscurely. Taking then the average man as our most
VOL. I. — 15

2 26 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

convenient guide — for popular religion has always been
much of a muchness in all countries — the first thing we
notice is his want of practical self-confidence. He is not
generally wanting in some sort of religious feeling good
or bad, for comparatively few succeed in getting entirely
rid of it ; but he shrinks from a direct approach to the
divine, and tries to shelter himself behind somebody he
supposes to be on better terms with heaven than he is
himself. His cry is always, Speak thou with us, and we
will hear : but let not God speak with us, lest we die.
What he wants is a prophet, to speak for God to him —
not necessarily or even chiefly to foretell the future,
thoueh he is glad of this too — but to tell him with
authority the meaning of the present in its relation to
unseen powers, or in the higher religions, in its relation
to a living God. Such authority he may suppose given
by outside credentials ; but he is not unlikely to see
more and more clearly that the moral or intrinsic
authority of a holy life is more fundamental and less
easily discredited by scandals and intellectual doubts:
In short, he needs a man who can light up the obscure
leadings of his conscience by telling him more exactly
what he ought to do, or rather what he ought to be ; for
if the lower religions largely deal in works of law, the
higher point with increasing urgency to character as the
only thing in man which can have any moral value.

Attain, the average man is never quite at ease with
himself. He may obscure his conscience by excess, or
harden himself against it, or deaden it by simple neglect ;
or he may try to reason himself out of it, and even boast
that he does not know what it means ; but neither the

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 227

practical nor the intellectual method of getting rid of it
is quite successful. However he may banish the dread
spectre of remorse from common life, he never knows
Vvdien or with what awful power it may return. So he
usually keeps on terms with religion ; and even where
men do not, the women do. Yet here again he shrinks
from direct relations with the divine, and seeks the
mediation of those who seem more worthy than himself
to speak with heaven. Strange and varied rites of
sacrifice bear witness in all ages to the terrible power
over him of this consciousness of sin, and to his inability
to overcome it for himself. We scarcely hear of " the
efficacy of repentance," except from the Deists ; and
modern science has thrown a lurid light on the indelible
consequences of our evil doings. Sacrificing priests are
found in most religions, and have crept into some which
like Christianity originally had none. Yet the priests
are only men a little better or may be a little worse than
the worshippers, and their ceremonies are sometimes
immoral, often irrational, always arbitrary in having no
true relation to sin. Even if the sacrifices be supposed
to remove the guilt of particular sins, the need of repeat-
ing them is proof enough that they cannot touch the
roots of sin. The man he needs to speak for him to God
is, if it be possible, a priest of a better sort, not con-
stituted by custom or by positive law, but by personal
character, for no common sinner can be supposed to do
effectually what these conventional sacrifices only do in
a limited and superficial way.

These two needs are conspicuous in history, and most
religions have aimed at the ideals corresponding to them.

228 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

A third which is no less real, though less prominent in
past ages, seems likely to be more and more distinctly
recognized in the future. The average man is not quite
unconscious of his deep estrangement from his fellow-
men. He may get on with his neighbours, and even with
his kinsmen at the ends of the earth ; though we hear
of class divisions and family quarrels, and have ample
experience that the closest of all ties has no charm that
cannot be broken by bitter hatred. Still less are nations
united. The very links of commerce, religion, and general
intercourse that bring them together are turned into
occasions for quarrels. The civilized world has not quite
outgrown the old heathen feeling that the stranger is an
enemy, and that coloured people at any rate are made to
be plundered by their betters. The official declarations
have always been edifying, from the days of Henry Yii
and Ferdinand of Aragon to the last Eussian manifesto,
and I will not venture to say that there is no truth at
all in them ; but none the less the great powers of
Europe are little better than robbers on the watch, all
armed to the teeth, most of them coveting pieces of their
neighbour's territory, and all but England intent on
strangling their neighbour's commerce with protective
tariffs. His prosperity is so much insult to them ; and
they will sooner do themselves harm than not do harm
to him. Nothing but selfish fears keep some of them
from trying to stamp out their rivals entirely, or — what
seems the modern ideal of glory — to " destroy their
material and moral resources," as the Germans put it,
by ruinous indemnities, commercial restrictions, and
financial receiverships. We have come back in a very

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 220

civilized way to the Eed Indian war cry, Let us go
and eat up that nation.

This is truth ; but it is not the whole truth, nor even
I think the most significant part of the truth. It is
only blood and iron — a survival of the barbarian's mailed
tist. It is not the power of the future. Though the
nations hate each other more actively than they did half a
century ago, there is more unity among them, and more
consciousness of unity. Commerce is international, so
is thought, and so is civilization generally; so that
civilized people all over the world are growing more like
each other in manners, in administration, and in ways
of thinking. Even Japan is not now so very unlike
Europe.^ The forces of the future make for unity, and
are seen to make for unity. The value of the individual,
which is our great inheritance from the nineteenth
century, gave new value to the nations in which he is
grouped ; but it implies even more the unity of mankind,
and nothing less than an Armageddon of the nations
utterly shattering civilization can prevent that unity
from more and more asserting itself and seeking some
visible form. I agree with Mr. Wells that civilized
states in course of time will come to have some unity
of government ; but a trade union of plotting engineers
is only a vulgar conspiracy of the South American sort.
Even a Samurai class would be no better. Unless all
history bears false witness, no one class can be trusted
to use absolute power in any interest but its own. If
the Samurais were all saints to begin with, they would
soon be mostly sinners. Can we see no worthier ideal

^ This was written before the war.

230 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

on the far horizon of a better age than ours ? Is no
nobler issue conceivable for the great historic evolution
of the higher from the lower, of unity through diversity ?
There have been few more impressive scenes in
history than the cry which rang one Christmas morning
through St. Peter's church at Eome, — Carolo Augusto, a

DEO CORONATO, MAGNO ET PACIFICO ImPERATORI, ViTA ET

Victoria. There is a truth we have not exhausted yet
in the ideal of the Holy Eoman Empire. Premature it
was in those rude times, when even the nations were not
in being, whose diversities are needed to form a true unity ;
but it remains none the less a parable for all ages. Karl
the Great had to begin by getting a whole code of law
and morals into the oath of fealty ; but it is not the
distinctive office of a king to make laws. That in
civilized states he best leaves his people to do for them-
selves, for the effective sanction of a law is not in his
command, but in the general recognition of its rightness.
Eastern kings are despots, and Western kings have often
been generals and nothing more ; but the Teutonic king
from the first embodied the unity of his people, and to
that highest function he seems now returning. If
Germany is a great exception, the reason is that notwith-
standing her splendid organization, her constitutional
development is behind the Tudor stage. But the ideal
king, if we may imagine him possible, is constituted
neither by a false pretence of divine right, nor by an
intrigue of Polish nobles, nor by a lying 2^if^i>iscite, nor
even by a regular and lawful Act of Settlement, but by
some such intrinsic and unquestioned force of character
as we see in founders of religious. Indeed, we can

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 231

hardly imagine a true king of men without a good deal
of the prophet in him, and peradventure something also
of the priest, for the archaic thought was not mistaken
which ruled that the king of Salem must also be priest
of the most high God. Just as philosophy had to take
up some of the functions of religion in the evil days
which followed Alexander, so the church was obliged to
take up some of the duties of the state in the evil days
we call the Middle Ages ; and now that the state is
taking back its rightful work, the cry is raised for
separation. Such cry does not always come from the
encroaching section of the church or the irreligious part
of the state ; but the separation would be a clear step
backward, and at best an unavoidable calamity to both.
It may suit the dualism of good and evil which counts
the church holy and the state profane ; but the true
ideal of the future is their close alliance in some form
higher and more spiritual than the old one, even if it
should prove that our unhappy divisions make us un-
worthy even to maintain such union as we have already.
If you say that I am influenced here as elsewhere by
Christian hope, I will not deny it. I cannot forswear
that spirit of hope which is the breath of life in every
Christian man ; but I submit that the hope which is
specifically Christian is also generically theistic. It
seems implied in every sort of Theism, though in its
Christian form it is more definite and confident, because
it claims assurance from certain alleged historical facts
to which I am no way now appealing. On purely
theistic grounds, I do not see how any serious person
can refuse to allow that the Christians have a good deal

232 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

of reason for their sure and certain hope, that the all-
ruling God who has guided the world-wide evolution
hitherto will not stay his onward course in future ages
till its last ideal has been made real, in this life or
another, before the face of living men. The only
question he can raise is whether that ideal is rightly
stated.

It is a far-off goal, a goal our children and our
children's children will not live to see ; but it is none
the less the goal towards which the long course of history
seems pointing. It is none the worse for being the
Christian ideal, if it is also — as I think it is — the ideal
suggested by a broad survey of the facts of the world
and of the needs of human nature in its present state.
And the ideals which rise above practical politics are
the powers of the future. We are all agreed, except
the pessimists, that some uplifting force is working in
the world. Whether we call it divine or not, no others
will dispute the action of such a force in geological and
in historic times ; and no Theist will feel it safe to place
limits on the possibilities of its future working. Nor
will any ideal fairly indicated by the deepest needs of
human nature seem impossible to those who measure
the ages of the future by the ages of the past ; and even
less will those dismiss it as a dream who believe in the
life after death which is postulated by every human
thought and every human feeling which is not entirely
bestial.

If then men could rise above their baser passions and
with clear insight ask for that help which their deepest
nature needs, some ideal of this kind seems to be the

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 233

thing for which they would ask. I am not saying that
the natural man would ask for ib, or that he would
welcome it if it came to him. Much the reverse. He
bids the prophets prophesy smooth things, and expects
the priests to soothe his conscience with stately rituals
and all the husks of outward worship, while to the king
his cry is not, Do right between us, but Avenge me of
mine adversary. It is doubtless a strange and horrible
thing when " the prophets prophesy lies, and my people
love to have it so " ; but it is not an uncommon thing.
The bitterest of haters are the men who know or more
than half suspect that they are hating truth. Did not
Plato tell us that if ever the perfect man appeared he
was sure to be crucified ? The persecutor is never a
lover of truth ; he is always a hater of truth, either
because he knows it to be true, or because he cannot bear
the thought that it may prove true. Yet the men who
killed the prophets will often build their tombs. Deeper
than they know is the appeal which blood has sealed.
All religions are rooted in something deeper than the
conscious thought of men, and all religions point more
or less in the direction of the ideal I have laid before
you, while the highest religions point to it more clearly
than others. And if this ideal truly corresponds to our
deepest needs, we may not unreasonably hope that a
God who cares enough for men to give them any sort of
revelation will not refuse in one way or another, at one
time or another, in one world or another, to satisfy the
highest aspirations of the nature he has given them.

By whatever method it may please God to deal with

234 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

sin, we are bound on all principles of Theism to believe
that he will not fail sooner or later to deal with it
effectively. This means first that he is able so to deal
with it. Otherwise we could not trust him, and all
thought (including this) would be idle fancy. But more
precisely, what does it mean ? Were sin illusion, as it
is in pantheistic and some other systems, it would
suffice for him to lift the vail of sense and shew us the
truth suh specie ceternitatis. But if conscience is real, sin
is real too. Again, if evil were no more than ripening
good, sin might be left to grow into something better.
But here again the witness of conscience is clear, that
sin is not an undeveloped form of good, but a direct
contradiction of that which is divine. It is rebellion
against an order which God has established, not as an
arbitrary law which might have been otherwise, but as
the expression and revelation of his nature to us ; so
that such rebellion resembles rather a personal attack on
the sovereign than a common breach of law which need
not come directly under his notice. To use an old
phrase, we make him a liar when we act as if what
pleases us were better than the law which he sets before
us in the order of things. This deeper and truer view
of sin was rightly given, though in a distorted way, by
the old argument that every offence against an infinite
Person is infinite, and deserves infinite punishment. If
then we do wrong with our eyes open or wilfully shut,
we are not as it were committing a petty breach of the
peace, but flatly saying, We will not have this man to
reign over us.

Now if this is the true meaning of sin, it follows that

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 235

God's relation to it must be one of absolute enmity. He
may tolerate it for a time, or use it as a means of training
for us in spite of itself, but in the end he must conquer
it. There is no alternative. Either God will conquer
sin, or sin will conquer God. Therefore even now he is
doing everything to combat it, short of uncreating man
by taking away the freedom which is needed to make
good real as well as evil. The natural order still speaks
to us of beauty and of lavish goodness, after all that
men have done to disfigure and corrupt it ; the moral
order in all the relations of life does not cease to preach
truth and tenderness and mercy, after all that sinners
have done to make it a school of selfishness and vice ;
and the terrors of conscience in God's name watch over
all our goings. It is not the gate of paradise but that
of hell which is

With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.

But though the flaming sword shall mark the sinner as
he passes in, not all the host of heaven can bar the
downward road.

Here is the trial of our faith. He that will go the
way of death, go he must, and onward to the end, for
sin too must work out its results in this world or another
to the uttermost. So long as he chooses to go that way,
no power in earth or heaven can stop him by force, in
this world or another. It is not a matter of difficulty
which power might be supposed great enough to over-
come, but a self-contradiction before which omnipotence
itself is impotent. The great white throne, the opened
books, the formal sentence of the day of doom — all these

236 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

cannot be more than signs and parables of something
more august and awful still. The decision will not be
some day launched upon us like the lightning from on
high, for here and now the moral order is compelling us
day by day to spell it out with unrelenting truth. It is
our own choice, and we are ourselves the books of record ;
and even if the lips that speak it are divine they can
only declare that which we ourselves have written. In
this world Nature has no forgiveness. She punishes one
sin with another, and pursues it to the bitter end. And
she knows of none hereafter. Eemorseless and inflexible
as ever, she faces without a qualm the furthest ages of
the future to pronounce her final word of doom — He that
is unjust, let him be unjust still.

Here then the most tremendous of all moral diffi-
culties rises to confront us, like some grim and terrible
spirit from

The dark unbottomed infinite abyss.

If only we can hold our ground at this point the
victory of faith is won, for in this last great strife all
others are summed up. But intellect is powerless here,
imagination fails, and only faith remains. If we had
that divine and surer word of which Plato speaks, there
might be much to confirm it in the world around us.
Could we be assured that there is one that liveth and
was dead, and is alive for evermore, our flesh might
rest in hope. But there are no such assurances as
these in Natural Theology. The question is not simply
of such forgiveness as man can give, which is simpl}'
one more force working in the world for good, but of

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 237

unravelling the whole tangle of misery which sin has
wrought upon this earth of ours. It seems impossible
to suppose that perfect goodness will rest content with
less than this.

There is some confusion of thought in the reply
commonly made here, that as seeds are wasted in nature,
so may men be wasted. This means that a seed is
" wasted " if it becomes food for birds or insects or
simply enriches the ground where it falls, instead of
growing up into a plant ; and the argument is that men
may be similarly " wasted " instead of growing up into
such higher state as some religions promise them. But
some seeds do grow into plants ; if then this argument
were valid, we should conclude that some men (though
only some) might reach the higher state. It would
concede something, though not what we are contending
for. However, it is not valid. It assumes that man
is a purely physical being. The seed is a means to an
end, and the end may as well be the bird or the insect
as the plant ; and man qua physical may very well come
to similar ends. But the image of God in man cannot
be simply a means like the seed. It must be an end
in itself, the one true end of the entire cycle ; and it
cannot miss its higher growth unless the evolution of
the ages which led up to it is a failure, and therefore
a delusion.

For it is further to be noted that a personal God
cannot be supposed to view the universe only in a
general way as we do. We know men only in classes,
and only recognize an individual when class-marks
enough meet in him. But God must know the in-

2.38 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

dividual directly, and have an individual use and mean-
ing for him in the general plan, so that such general
plan cannot be carried out unless the individual plan is
carried out along with it. If indeed we could imagine
some men no more than supernumeraries, the general
plan might be fully carried out without regard to them ;
but in a divine plan the superfluous is as incredible as
the defective.

If sin is a mystery, its reversal is a deeper mystery ;
yet if it is never to be reversed, the confusion will be
as final as if there were no God at all. Hard as it is
for mortal weakness even to imagine how this thing can
be, it is flatly unthinkable that sin shall have the final
victory. The one is no more than an unfathomed
mystery which may be true, the other a contradiction
in terms which cannot but be false. The one im-
possibility which overrides all others is that any per-
versity of created beings should finally defeat the
purpose of all-enduring patience and all-sovereign good-
ness.

That purpose plainly rises far above the highest
flights of human thought. The majestic evolution of
the ages on this earth of ours cannot be more than a
tiny fragment of a scheme of right and goodness that
must reach outward from the crumblings of atoms to
the building of the mightiest star that walks the frozen
verge of heaven, and forward from beyond the furthest
past which the astronomer can discern to beyond the
furthest future which the prophet can divine. Yet if
our theistic faith is not illusion we have some true
knowledge of the eternal purpose ; and we can but bear

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 239

witness of the best our God has given us to know.
With all reserve then — God pardon human ignorance
and rashness — the perfect victory of perfect goodness
would seem finally to require the willing submission of
all moral beings in the universe. Great as the difficulties
are, especially from the standpoint of the Christians,
who take so serious a view of sin, they are no way
lessened if we suppose that God will annihilate the
sinners, or shut up hardened and impenitent rebels in
hell for ever. Nor is there much gained by the theory
that the penalty for the misuse of free will is the
deprivation of it, so that the sinners will hereafter do
right, but only as machines. This too would seem a
confession that freedom is a failure. But from the
Christian point of view the point is rather that the
punishment is sure and certain, terrible and irretrievable,
than that it has no end. May there not even be a
fallacy in the question whether it has an end or not, if
the state we call eternal is not a state of space and
time ? All that we can do is to hold on for very life
to the theistic faith without which all thought is idle,
and rest in sure and certain hope that as God is God,
perfect goodness in the end must have its perfect victory,
and the love that beareth all things must also be the
love that overcometh all things.

At this point we may do well to pause. We have
traced something like an outline of the form in which
a revelation is likely to be given ; and though my own
belief is that Natural Theology would carry us a little
further, it may be safer to stop here and leave you to
judge for yourselves how far our work has been well

240 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

(lone. If I have taken hints and borrowed phrases
from all quarters, I have worked on grounds of reason
only, and scrupulously avoided anything like an appeal
to an alleged miracle in proof of anything, though
sometimes it has been worth while to point out what
would follow if such miracle were true. Hope that is
Christian I have expressed only so far as it seems
involved in Theism generally ; and in our examination
of doctrines that are Christian we have limited ourselves
to such of them as can conveniently be discussed without
raising the historical question of the truth of particular
miracles. The problems, however, that come next are
full of meaning, and some of them as urgent as any
that we have touched already. For instance, even those
who are most firmly convinced that the Christian claim
on behalf of Jesus of Nazareth is false can hardly dispute
that if there is any doubt at all, it lays on us the most
solemn duty to use all our powers of heart and soul and
mind in the endeavour to clear it up. Whether that
claim be true or false in fact, no condemnation can be
too severe for the man who snatches at the first excuse
for accepting or rejecting it. Right or wrong, he is
gambling with truth.

It may be that our position would have been
strengthened if we had seen our way to go further.
As a matter of history, the sovereignty of God and
the freedom of man have not gone well together. One
of the two ideas tends to exclude the other. Either
God absorbs man in Pantheism, or man banishes God
in Deism. Either man is wholly subject to some
universal law, or he stands out in the godless isolation

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 241

of that which is right in his own eyes.^ There is no
escape from the dilemma, unless God and man are
joined by some true affinity which destroys their mutual
exclusiveness. Such an affinity is found by the philo-
sophical doctrine that there is a spark of the divine in
man ; and it might have been worth while to ask
whether the Christian doctrine of an incarnation does
not put the philosophical in its strongest form, and if
so, whether this may not be a presumption in its favour.
Or suppose we had taken the full doctrine that Christ
is on one side the eternal and sufficient object of the
Father's love, and on another the archetype of man,
the ground of the natural and the organic head of the
spiritual order. Such a conception involves difficulties,
may be some serious difficulties ; but if it be supposed
true, it certainly throws a flood of light on such various
questions as God's independence of the world, the
harmony of transcendence and immanence, the revelation
of the eternal in things of time, the meaning and
possibilities of human nature, and the sufficiency of
one who was man to fulfil the highest needs and
aspirations of mankind. This last, if I am not mis-
taken, is more than almost any other a question which
needs closer attention than is commonly given to it in
current literature even on the Christian side, for I am

^ Andrew Setli (Pringle Pattison), Hegelianism and Personality, 162.
Both philosophy and religion bear ample testimony to the almost in-
superable difficulty of finding room in the universe for God and man.
When speculation busies itself -with the relation of these two, each in
turn tends to swallow up the other. The pendulum of human thought
swings continually between the two extremes of Individualism, leading to
Atheism, and Uuiversalism, leading to the Pantheism or Akosmism.
VOL. I. — 16

242 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

not saying this as a fling at opponents. Assuming the
very highest view of his divinity, I still cannot see my
way to account for moral influence which only grows
as ages pass, unless he stands in a closer relation to
individuals than professing Christians have commonly
realized. In any case, the question needs attention.

Or take the doctrine of the Trinity, not as a
conundrum of the dogmatists, but as the expression
of a belief that divine life as well as human has a
social element. Is not such a belief the most emphatic
of protests that all relations whatever imply duties
on both sides ? If God himself is not arbitrary, the
existence of despotism or slavery on earth must stand
condemned. A God whose relations are as binding
for himself as for his creatures is neither the inscrutable
Emptiness of the Agnostic and the Pantheist nor the
inscrutable Power of the Muslim and the Latin, but
a living Father to his erring children. This is the
real meaning of the decision at Nicsea. The divine
ideal set forth by Athanasius was never quite forgotten
in the Middle Ages ; and it gives the august sanction of
divine example to that broad sense of mutual duty which
is the first necessity of civilized society.

Or take the most distinctive of all Christian doctrines
— that of Christ in us and us in Christ. Some will
answer that it is mystic, as indeed it is, and for that
reason summarily reject it; but let us put the sup-
position that it may be true. There can be no question
that it accounts at once for many things that greatly
need to be accounted for. Many faiths have inspired
noble characters — far be it from me to count any doer

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 248

of truth an alien from the Church of God — many have
diffused religion after their kind through all ranks of
men or every act of life, and some have guided nations
with little change for centuries. But low religions can
shew lofty characters, low religions can pervade life,
low religions can cry their Semper eadem. It is neither
intensity nor diffusion nor permanence, but the combina-
tion of the three, and all in so high degree, which makes
Christianity unique in history ; and for this combination
as well as for its moral purity the unbeliever is as much
bound as the believer to find serious and sufficient causes.
The author of the mightiest moral force we know in
history and life must have at the lowest a very eminent
and special place as a man among men, and I find no
consideration of Natural Theology which forbids the
higher view of him held by Christians ; but the positive
evidence they offer for it is too closely connected with
alleged miraculous facts to be disentangled from them
by any criticism that is reasonable. If we undertook
to cut out the miraculous element from the Gospels
we should have to cut out nearly all the rest as
inseparable from it, and might come to a remainder
as meagre as Schmiedel's nine genuine sayings of Jesus,
though it would be surprising if any fair-minded man
selected those nine.

As we must not raise the historical question of
miracles there is but one thing more to say at this
point. As I look back on history, and on my own forty
years of a student's quiet life, the thing that overawes
me is not the increase of knowledge but the widening
of the outlook and the quickening of the pulse of life.

244 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

On all sides we see the partial theories crowded out,
the partial questions melting into universals, as if the
whole field of human knowledge were being levelled for
some final contest. Polytheism is a survival, and the
old dualism of good and evil is now untenable. Deism
is forgotten, Materialism is discredited, Agnosticism is
going the same way, and the choice that now remains
is between some form of Theism and the iron yoke of a
pantheistic necessity. But Theism has never ruled a
nation except in its Christian form, and we may be
certain that it never will. A few of the elect may
live by logic, but common mortals cannot do without
feeling. It is a deeper thing than reasoning, and nearly
always overcomes it when the two conflict together.
Human nature cries aloud for a living God who gives
us some assurance of his love, a God at whose feet we
may find our true self in a knowledge which is life and
a service which is perfect freedom. The Determinist
may answer that human nature is in a state of total
depravity ; but in any case the fact remains — and it
must be a fact of weighty meaning — that human nature
turns to a religion of feeling as surely as the needle
turns to the north, and in some such religion seeks to
satisfy this its deepest need : and of such religions,
Christianity seems the highest. Judaism may be tenable,
if it be taken in the old way, as resting on historical
assurances of God's goodness, and as no more than
provisional, till Messias comes " wlio shall tell us all
things." If it is not so taken, it becomes a very
ordinary sort of Unitarianism : and Unitarianism is
always in unstable equilibrium. It can speak of God,

POSSIBLE METHODS OF REVELATION 245

and it cau speak of man ; but it cannot firmly link the
two together. Each in turn swallows up the other.
On one side is the deistic phase where God is all and
man is nothing ; and this endangers the image of God
in man, without which experience can have no rational
meaning. On the other is the pantheistic version, that
man is as necessary to God as God to man : and this is
destructive of all religion. These are the Scylla and
Charybdis of Unitarianism, and no safe course between
has yet been found. We may be thankful for the
efforts of men like Martineau and Harnack to see in
Jesus of Nazareth assurance as well as preaching of the
Fatherhood of God without confessing his divinity.
This is much ; but no mere child of man can be the
everlasting link we need. The sovereign claim of God
to human trust will never be fully vindicated till His
right and goodness are no longer viewed as attributes
of power, but made the eternal ground of everything
divine, and an eternal assurance of this is found in
facts which are facts of the eternal world as well as
facts of time.

Christianity is at least logical, for the link it finds
belongs as much to the eternal world as to that of time.
But it stands or falls by its Founder's claim to be
divine as well as human, and the more profoundly
natural for being something more than natural in the
narrow sense. You may accept that claim or you may
reject it ; but you cannot compromise it. Half measures
like Arianism are folly. Whatever the difficulty may
be, it must be thoroughly dealt with, not glossed over.
It may be that living power is not needed to account

246 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

for the facts ; but if it is, a theory which fails to provide
it is self-condemned as insufficient. Whether you are
moving towards belief or unbelief, there is no rest in
the halting half and half theories which look for living
power to a purely human Christ who never rose with
power from the dead. Some day possibly the research
of the learned will discover some truer and better link
between the eternal and the things of time ; but until
that is done (if we can seriously expect such a thing)
there are but two self-consistent and so far tenable
positions. You may worship Christ, or you may seat
Necessity upon the throne of God, and worship that.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.

(SECOND COUESE OF LECTURES.)

LECTURE X.

PRIMITIVE RELIGION.

I.

Now that we have formed by the light of Natural
Theology the best idea we can of what revelation will
be, we have still to review historically the conceptions
men have formed of what it has been. The task is one
of enormous range and complexity, for the conception of
revelation is in mathematical language a function of
many variables. The ideas indeed of God and man
which chiefly determine it are so closely related that
either might be inferred without risk of any great error
from the other ; but they are both influenced together
and in much the same way by all the forces that act on
the moral state of men, like their knowledge of nature,
their social and political condition, and the varied
circumstances of individual life. As the religion,
whatever it be, directly and indirectly shapes the life of

247

248 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

men in all its relations, so also that life reacts on the
religion, and shapes the conception of revelation. A
morally great or mean life, national or individual, tends
to a great or a mean idea of God and man, and therefore
to a great or a mean conception of revelation ; and
any influence which raises or debases life will also raise
or debase the others, so that a full discussion of the
conception of revelation would be a full discussion of the
history of human life. We shall find it as much as we
can do to trace the merest outline, marking out some
of the main lines of development, but not attempting
to give more than a rough chart even of these.

If all true thought retraces God's thought, all
religions must be his revelation, so far as they are true.
However elementary the truth may be, however great
the errors men connect with it, truth is still divine. It
may be no more than that there is a power kindred to
us though unseen, with whom we can live and ought to
live on terms of trust and friendliness. This is not
much of a creed ; but it contains the essentials of
religion. Here is faith, that such a power is, and is a
rewarder of them that seek him — for him it must be,
whenever the conception of faith is fairly thought out.
Here is morality, for this belief binds me to do some
things as right and to forbear others as wrong without
regard to selfish ends. Here is trust, which is in germ
the perfect love that casteth out fear. And here is
communion, not only with that power but with my
fellows, for kinship to me is kinship to my clan, and
joins us all in common duties. This trustful sense of
common duty to an unseen but kindred power seems the

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 249

least which can be called religion ; and the history of
religion is the unfolding of this conception in its age-
long struggle with the alien and intruding power of
magic.

Before we go further we must get clear the difference
between magic and religion, for there has always been a
good deal of confusion. Magic then or art-magic
resembles religion in dealing with unseen powers, so
that it is entirely distinct from what is called
sympathetic magic. This last is not properly magic at
all, but the science of the savage, by which he tries
to bring rain, make the crops grow, or do other things
which he believes he can do himself. This may be
crude science ; but there can be no question of either
magic or religion till he comes to things which he
believes can only be done by the unseen powers. Magic
may also be like religion in outward form, and sometimes
even becomes religion when our relation to the unseen
powers is differently conceived. The distinction is in
this relation ; and it is absolute. In magic we do not
trust the unseen powers w^e are dealing with : in
religion we do. Bargaining with gods is not magic, for
we cannot bargain even with men unless we have some
trust in them. Thus Jacob's vow is religious, though a
low form of religion. We are not using magic till we
endeavour to outwit or wheedle the unseen powers, or
to compel them by the terror of some power supposed
to be greater than theirs. In short, we are not trusting
them : we believe only that they will do what we make
them do. But the natural man does not care to serve
the gods for nought : so he mixes up magic with religion

250 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

till he forgets the difference, and puzzles whole schools of
philosophers and archaeologists. Thus the proposal to
measure scientifically the value of prayer by its results
in one ward of a hospital depends on a complete
confusion of religion with magic. It must be allowed
that there was a good deal of authority for supposing
the conception of prayer to be a sort of spiritual
artillery — the more pieces the better — for making
heaven do what we want. But the idea is in as
fundamental antagonism to religion as it is to science.
It is only the magic which clings to the lower forms of
religion, and is rejected by the higher. We need not
come up to Christianity or Plato for a repudiation of it.
As low down in the scale as such a champion of theurgy
and brutish idol- worships as the writer de mysteriis
j^gyptiorum, we find a noble protest that prayer is not
a means of inducing the gods to change the course of
things but their own good gift of communion with them,
the blessing of the living gods upon their children. To
take the battery theory for religion is no better than
judging science by astrology. Even if religion and
magic were using the same ceremonies in much the
same way, the difference of attitude to the unseen
powers would make an absolute contrast between them.
In magic we seek to impose our own will on those
powers : in religion we are free like children to make
known our needs to them, but we submit ourselves to
their will.

The history of religion is long and chequered. In
one direction the simple god of totemism is developed
into a Babel of polytheistic invention, or still further

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 251

degraded into the malignant spirits of the savage : in
another he climbs the narrow path of monotheism to
become first the God of Israel, then the Lord of all
the earth, and at last our heavenly Father. In a few
cases it may be that spirits of the underworld who at
first were evil powers became in course of time protectors
of the good and arbiters of life to come. So too the
conception of worship has undergone many changes, not
always for the better. In one direction the rude primitive
communion was developed into gifts of sacrifice and
bargains with gods, or further degraded into hideous
orgies of lust and blood, sometimes balanced after a
fashion by morbid excesses of asceticism : in another it
gradually threw off the primitive formalism of sacramental
accuracy, to become more and more a reasonable service
of willing and unselfish piety, such as is described for
all ages in the old words, " to do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."

The prehistoric growth of religion will not detain us
long. In the first place, our knowledge of it is scanty
and obscure. We find its relics ; but the ideas originally
connected with them are not so easy to determine.
Given some things found in a burying-place : had any
of them a religious meaning ? If so, can we find out
exactly what it was ? Perhaps the question is harder
than it looks. Imagine the archaeologists five thousand
years hence describing Christianity from the remains of
its churches, all records having perished.^ We might
read, " These people were unquestionably polytheists.

1 I owe the thought to Brace, The Unknown God, p. 5 ; but I have
worked it out a little diflereutly.

252 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

We find some differences of North and South ; but
everywhere the chief gods were a woman with a child,
and a crucified man whose relation to them is uncertain.
There are also traces of many lesser gods, of whom some
are represented as put to death by violence. The idea
indeed of crucifixion seems to have had a fascination for
them, to judge by the form of their buildings, and the
numerous crosses and crucifixes which remain. As they
were fairly civilized, we can hardly suppose that they
worshipped criminals. The evidence rather points to
an extensive personification of natural forces in their
ceaseless conflict. Thus the woman with the child may
be Mother Earth, or better perhaps the Corn-maiden,
while the crucified man may represent some solar myth
of light overcome by the powers of darkness, and the
minor gods will stand for other myths of a similar
sort."

If you call this a strange account of Christianity, I
quite agree with you. But if some of the archa3ologists
have come to results of this kind in spite of records, it
is not unreasonable to suppose that others might go the
same way if records were lost. Perhaps we have not
slandered the Christians much worse than some of us
have slandered primitive man. The ideas of savages,
on which archaeologists depend so much for their con-
clusions, are hard to ascertain and hard to understand,
and in any case give us no very safe clue to the ideas
of primitive man. If savage life is a likeness, it must
also be a caricature of primitive life, for we have to
reckon with the plain fact that primitive man is as
much the ancestor of civilized as of savage man. In

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 253

the matter which now concerns us he was more like
civilized man, for be must have had not only the general
capacity for improvement which belongs to human nature,
but the particular capacity for self-improvement which
the modern savage seems to have lost. This fact makes
a great difference ; and the only alternative is to make
a greater difference by supposing that the special help
which now has to come from a more civilized people
was originally given straight from heaven. On either
theory primitive man was not simply a savage. If he
was a child in knowledge, his moral sense likewise may
have been that of a child, less developed but also less
perverted than in later times. His power of mind,
however, must have been considerable, as we see from
his inventions and his occasional artistic skill. In a
word, it is not safe to assume that the ancestors of
modern savages either never got beyond the state of
primitive man, or else that, having got beyond it, they
fell back precisely to their former state and no further.
As well judge the wine by the dregs as primitive man
by the savage.

Nor would the fullest knowledge of primitive religion
entitle us to make it the standard of all religion. Our
fathers may have done so ; but we should contradict the
very idea of evolution if we read the later growths in
terms of the earher. This is " going back to nature,"
like the Cynics and Eousseau. The key must be in the
highest religions, not in the lower. As the Judaizers of
the apostolic age who construed the Gospel by the Law
completely misunderstood them both, so the students
of our time who try to construe the higher religions

254 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

by the lower — say the Old Testament by fetishism, or
the New by solar myths and human sacrifices — would
seem as much mistaken as their predecessors. Archasology
may be to history what palaeontology is to physiology ;
but it cannot be very much more. If religion is in any
way a subject of evolution, we shall not find its meaning
in the caput mortuum which may remain when all
religions have been well shaken together, but in some
principle or other which may be scarcely traceable in
the lower religions, but becomes clearer in the higher,
and only reaches its full development in the highest.
Such a principle is that of trust in the unseen powers.

But which are the higher, and which are the lower ?
What is primitive religion, and what is not ? These
are distinct questions, but neither of them can be
settled simply by chronology. In the first place, the
world was old when history begins. We cannot say
how many thousand years of development lie behind
the old civilization of the Euphrates valley. Again,
some peoples move faster than others. India soon ran
through her religion of nature, and settled down into
a fairly modern pantheistic polytheism, while China is
still in an almost patriarchal stage of ancestor-worship,
and still has the emperor for priest of heaven. Even
in one people the individual differences range upward
from the lowest forms of religious tliought to the
highest of the time. We do not take either Marcus or
Commodus as fair samples of their subjects. So too
every modern country has plenty of people in all ranks
of life whose notions of religion are little better than
those current in West Africa. All that can be done

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 255

is to strike a sort of average, as we do in estimating
national character, neglecting such baser elements as
are not too obtrusive. Thus we can pass over the
Mormons in England, though some account might have
to be taken of them in America.

Even so, the classification of religions is not easy.
Many schemes have been proposed, but there seem to
be objections to all. The old classification of true and
false expresses a vital difference ; but the difference is
not so much of religions as wholes, as of their guiding
ideas, for in practice no religion is pure truth or pure
falsehood. Again, the division into national and
universal covers many of the facts ; but Judaism and
Islam form an awkward intermediate class, and
Christianity is more akin to either of these than to
the Buddhism which ranks as the other universal
religion. There are great merits also in the distinction
of monotheistic and polytheistic religions ; but here
again the classification is confused. Some religions are
monotheistic in theory and polytheistic in recognized
practice, like the old Eclecticism or modern Eomanism.
How are these to be classed ? So also the division of
religions into natural and ethical may bring out the
difference of principle between magic and morality ;
but it gives no sharp line of demarcation. There is
an ethical element in the lowest religions, and a magical
clings to the highest, say in verbal inspiration or the
ex opere operato view of sacraments. Moreover, natural
and ethical is a false contrast. There is more that is
ethical in the higher natural religions than in the
lowest ethical. The sunny naturalism of Greece with

256 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

all its faults is on a higher moral plane than Buddhist
asceticism with all its beauty. Again, the difference
between founded and unfounded religions is important,
and roughly answers to the " revolution " which marks
the passage from the natural to the ethical. Yet even
here we cannot escape questions of degree. Be his
originality what it may, the founder stands in close
relation to his own time, and cannot do more than
reform the religion he finds. Thus Islam is made up
of the Jewish, Christian, and heathen ideas which were
current in Arabia. The Buddha took over the degraded
Indian conception of gods — and put them aside as
minor beings at best ; and accepted the idea of re-
tribution in the future — but applied it to the trans-
mission of karma, instead of the transmigration of souls.
Even Jesus of Nazareth "came not to destroy, but to
finish" the work which the law began but was not
able to carry through. A real revolution making a
clean severance from the past is as impossible in
religion as in politics.

If we must have a classification, the best is Hegel's,
by the value assigned to the individual. In religions
of mass, as he called them, the individual is lost in the
society ; in religions of individuality, society exists for
the individual; while Christianity as the one religion
of spirit proclaims at once the supreme value of the
individual and the need of the society to bring him to
perfection. This division answers to the historical
development of religion generally. First came the
objective religions, then the subjective, then those that
strive to reconcile in a higher unity the ideas of both.

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 257

There is a similar development in society generally,
where we pass from a rule of custom to a rule of
contract, and from an age of authority to an age of
liberty, from a condition where the individual is lost
in the State to one where the State exists for the
individual ; and where we are now looking for a re-
conciliation between authority and liberty, State manage-
ment and individual enterprise. It is the same within
the limits of Christianity. First came the Catholic
systems, where man was made for the Church ; then
the Protestant, in which the Church was made for
man ; and now we are feeling after something that
shall give a real value to the Church consistent with
the supreme value of the individual. Current thought
inside and outside the churches is upon the whole
moving forward to this third stage, in spite of the
strong pantheistic and catholic reactions to the first
which mark the second half of the nineteenth
century.

The difficulty of classification is much the same
with religions as in zoology. We can more easily
come to a general agreement than justify it by any
single character. Thus in the Mollusca, if we go by
the shell only or the radula only, we shall some-
times separate allied genera ; ^ and conversely, we
can bring together from very different genera either
similar shells ^ or a particular type of radula — arboreal ^

^ Thus the shell separates Limax from Euplecta, the radula Murex
from Ranella.

- Like Helix and Natalina, Pupa and Ennea, Cseliaxis and Cylindrella.

^ Arboreal : Rhachis, and species of Helicostyla and Amphidromus ;
Janella, and Achatinella (not Amastra).
VOL. I. — 17

258 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

or parasitic,^ for example. In some cases the shell
is misleading, in others the radula will not separate
species.^ No single character is an absolutely safe
guide. So with religions : there is no single feature
which will not sometimes mislead us. Still, certain
features are more or less common in ancient religions,
while in modern times they are chiefly found in peoples
and individuals otherwise known to be backward
or degraded. Even these, however, are not unerring
tests, for we occasionally see flashes of high light in the
lower religions, while strange survivals and superstitions
in the higher bear witness to the persistent force of old
beliefs. Yet even the high truths in low religions are
commonly misconceived in an environment of low thought,
and take the form of scandals. Thus the theory of the
high places with their social religion all over the country
was higher than that of the fixed and local services at Jeru-
salem ; but of the practice the less said the better. The
belief in a " feminine " element in the divine was mixed
up with matters of sex, and led to such gross excesses
that decent religions have always looked on it with
great and just suspicion. Yet its truth is undeniable
for those who confess the image of God in man, unless
the " feminine " virtues are either rejected or placed in
a lower class. Indeed, the fact that we count them

1 Parasitic : Cerithiopsis, Pedicularia, Sistrum (spectrum Rve only,
so far as my observation goes). To these may be added the curious
likeness of radula between such utterly different genera as Omphalotropis
and Ovula, or Urocoptis and Ancylus (only elatior Anth and rhodacme
Walker, so far as I know).

2 Thus in the Buccinidse the individual variation is greater than the
specific ; and in large genera like Clausilia and Achatinella (not Amastra)
the radula of different species is often indistinguishable.

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 259

distinctively feminine is a relic of the barbarian belief that
force is strength, and a clear mark of our own imperfect
evolution.

For our purpose, however, we shall need no very precise
classification. It will suffice to take the closely related
ideas of God and man embodied in religions, for these
will in the main determine the conception of the know-
ledge of God. The divine may be distributed through
the parts of the world or lost in the world as a whole ; ^
or it may stand out in clear personality as a God above
the world, and perhaps also in the world. It may
hardly differ from men except in power, or it may be
invested with the noblest attributes of right and good-
ness. Likewise man may be no more than an item of
some family or tribal unit ; or he may be sharply distin-
guished as an individual person responsible for his own
acts only. What is popularly called religion may aim
chiefly at propitiating or outwitting vaguely conceived
spirits by magical rites and ceremonies ; or it may lay
decisive stress on a moral relation to one personal God.
It may be satisfied with an accurate performance of
outward observances ; or it may require a spiritual ser-
vice and truth in the inward parts. It may be content
with unreasoning traditionalism ; or it may seek by
manifestation of the truth to commend itself to all men
in the sight of God.

Eeligions lie variously between these extremes. The
lowest of them is above the ideal natural man of St. Paul,
who has no sense at all of religion, while the highest fail
to realize generally among men the ideal spiritual man,

1 Or more accurately, the world may be lost in it.

260 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

in whom that sense is perfect. But in general the
higher ideas cohere together, and so do the lower. If the
conception of God is high, so generally is that of man,
and conversely. Thus the imperfect ideas of human
personality current among the ancients are reflected
in imperfect conceptions of the divine ; and conversely,
the haze which modern Pantheism throws over the idea
of God obscures and degrades the personality of man.
As long as magic is stronger than science, the gods must
be supposed variable in temper and weak of will ; and so
long as custom and tradition reign supreme, there is no
free scope for moral conceptions of God and man. The
one must be inscrutable power, the other either un-
reasoning obedience to power — which is a base religion
— or else coaxing or outwitting of power — which is not
religion at all. It is not by accident that since the
Eeformation we have had on one side a development of
our idea of God by the discoveries of science, the estab-
lishment of natural law, and the overthrow of the old
belief in a despot in heaven ; and on the other that deep-
ened respect for human personality which is the glory of
civilized nations in our own time.

Whatever be the origin of man, no ideas in any true
sense religious can have crossed his mind till he was not
only equal to the higher beasts in bodily structure and
social habits, but also possessed of the human reason we
find in the lowest savages, and of the sense of right and
wrong without which there can be no religion. We may
therefore credit him from the first with gregarious
habits, which indscd were necessary for his continuance,
and with natural affection, which owing to his long

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 261

infancy must always have played a much larger part in
human than it does in animal life. The clan was the
unit, for the family was not yet, though mere animal
jealousy would be enough to secure some fixity in sexual
relations. Even the savage is far from destitute of
moral sense. If his ideas of what ought or ought not to
be done differ from ours, he is quite as clear that some
things ought to be done and some ought not. Nor does
he differ entirely from us as to what they are, for he
will sometimes do works of human kindliness that
might shame his betters ; and even where the men will
not, the women mostly will. Some savage tribes are
treacherous to strangers, most are thievish, all excessively
thoughtless and careless of human life, all liable to
indefinite debasement by drink, yet it must not be
forgotten that those whom necessity or choice has
brought into close relations with them commonly think
much better of them than passing travellers.

Primitive man must have been at least as good as
this, with more capacity for improvement. He was
also something of a philosopher. The fact that he did
not perish is evidence enough of a sound practical faith
in the uniformity of nature ; and there seems to be
evidence that he was not without a theory of the
universe. It was very objective, and so anthropomorphic,
for he appears to have ascribed all changes not caused
by the action of his own will to the action of other wills
— of spirits like his own resident in all things, though at
first not necessarily supernatural. If he has no clear
idea yet of the difference in kind between things and
himself, or even between live and dead things, so much

262 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

the more is he compelled to figure himself in their
likeness, and them in his own.

The mere persistence of things he might at first
regard as placidly as the beasts ; but he is too dependent
on them not to watch their changes with keen interest.
If he scarcely notices the quiet stream, he cannot
overlook the swollen torrent; and the storm and the
earthquake dismay him as they dismay the beasts. Here
at all events he sees the supernatural, for he can hardly
compare himself on equal terms with the strong (not
necessarily liostile ^) spirits at work in these. However
inscrutable their action might be, it was too fascinating
to be looked on with unmixed fear, though the mystery
deepened as he gradually learned by trial the limits of
his power, and found that many things which had
seemed matters of course must be put down to some
sort of supernatural agency.

But it is not good for man to be alone in a world
which he has peopled with spirits natural and super-
natural. His craving for security and rest under the
protection of some higher power is as natural as his
craving for food, and must have shown itself at once.

1 As Mr. J. M. Robertson, Pagan C'Jmsts, 9, takes for granted. It is a
strange book. Its first line complains of "theological cavils," its first
argument forces on Mr. Jevons an idiotic inconsistency which is made
to run through his work — and is quite imaginary' ; and so it goes on,
forcing absurdities at every turn. For instance, Mr. Jevons draws a
broad distinction between " art-magic " and "sympathetic magic." Mr.
Robertson has a right to dispute it if he thinks it nnsound ; but he
makes gratuitous confusion (p. 23, notes * and ^) by quoting Mr. Jevons'
words about "magic " — by which he always means art-magic, as if they
referred to sympathetic magic. Habitual mistakes of this kind used to
be called special j^leading ; but I do not know what is now their proper
description.

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 263

Even the superior persons who have risen above it
will tell us that the weakness is almost universal, and
in most cases very hard to overcome. So deeply is it
rooted in human nature that few even of the enlightened
can escape occasional falls into rehgion. There is no
reason to suppose that primitive man had less than we
have of that craving ; and if so, it seems a more natural
and a more likely basis for rehgion than pure and
simple fear.

Of the earliest stage of religion we have no direct
knowledge ; but it cannot have been one of continual
terror. Even the beasts are above this ; and primitive
man must have been as good as they. Moreover, there
is an impassable gulf between such terror and religion.
There is no more religion in mere fear of spirits than in
mere fear of a tyrant ; and out of mere fear no religion
can be developed. The vital element of religion is not
fear but trust, so that it cannot ever have been mere
fear without trust. Let us put this again, that there
may be no mistake. Fear as an animal passion has
nothing to do with religion ; and the fear of punishment
suggested by a bad conscience is not a necessary part of
religion. There was not much of it in such early times
as had no great sense of sin ; and there is not much
left of it in such choice products of the highest rehgions
as can say, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.
We should no more fear the gods than we fear our
nearest friend, if only we were as sure of our relation
to them. Thus there is a stage below the bad con-
science as well as one above it ; and the theory that
fear developed into religion would not be even plaus-

264 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

ible if the iutermediate stages did not almost cover
history.

If religion is a subject of evolution, its earliest form
is likely to have been rather childlike than either
savage or idyllic. The theory that " an Aristotle was
but the rubbish of an Adam " is no better and no worse
than the other extreme, that the most degraded savages
are the most faithful portraits of primitive man. The
child begins with instinctive trust — neither as an angel
nor as a monster, but with a chaos of unreflecting
impulses waiting to be shaped into a definitely good or
bad character. Even if there ever was a primitive stage
of continual terror, it cannot have lasted. Animal fear
has nothing to do with the matter : and as soon as man
had mind enough to reflect on his fear he must also
have had mind enough to see the obvious escape, by
finding friends among the spirits around him.

LECTURE XL

PRIMITIVE RELIGION.

IL

Accordingly, one of the earliest forms of religion we
can trace is totemism. It is widespread even now
in America and Australia, lasted till Christian times
in Egypt, is recorded by Herodotus for sundry parts
of the world, and has left so many traces elsewhere,
that we can hardly avoid the conclusion that the
ancestors even of the most civilized peoples were largely
totemists : and at the other end of the scale the
offerings of savages and others to confessedly evil
spirits would seem partly debasements of totemism and
partly returns to the magic and animism from which
totemism was perhaps never free. For we should be
going much beyond the evidence if we supposed that
every nation, or indeed any nation, has gone through
a period in which its religious ideas were purely
totemistic. We should rather expect to find much
confusion. Totemism may have held on a lower plane
something like the position of monotheism in northern
Israel or Christianity in southern Europe. Even if it
was a dominant religion which nobody wished to
renounce, there may have been any amount of baser

265

266 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

worships and downright magic practised alongside of
it. Only, totemism had a development before it ; the
others had none. To take a geological illustration : the
dominance of reptiles in the Trias does not mean that
there were not plenty of lower forms living along with
them ; only from the reptiles came the mammalia, while
the lower forms which survived have always remained
lower forms. So we shall find that from totemism sprang
^monotheism, while so far as other forms of thought
survive at all they are still very little changed. Even
polytheism was no more than a marsupial side-branch
which led to nothing higher. If then we concentrate
our attention for awhile on totemism, we shall not do
so under any illusion that it was the only form even
of animal-worship, or always the most prominent religion
in early times, but simply because it lies on the direct
line of evolution — the rest are side-branches.

The meaning of totemism is that the clan, itself held
together by blood-relation, forms an alliance, and there-
fore a blood-relation with the spirit resident, not in an
individual animal, but in all the animals of a certain
species. These animals were kindly treated, so that
some of them became tame, for no individual was
allowed to kill them. But on certain occasions one of
them was killed and eaten by the whole clan, that the
life of the spirit (now become the god) might pass into
them and renew the blood-covenant. It had to be
wholly consumed, and every member of the clan was
required to partake of it.

There could not be much idea of revelation yet,
though there was already a clear sense of dependence

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 267

on the god and duty to the clan, inchiding the god.
Such loyalty no doubt was pleasing to him ; and he
further signified his good will by sending prosperity
and his displeasure by calamities, but there was not
much room for any special communications from him,
except such as might be found in the appearances and
actions of the totem animal.

Totemism was the worship of a clan, and could not
be adapted to a larger circle without essential changes,
so that it decayed and passed away as the clan decayed
and passed away. Even in its best days the totem
god was but the one friendly spirit out of many, so
that evil-disposed persons could always form relations of
their own for selfish purposes with other spirits, which,
being other, were not friendly to the clan. Such
relations would ape the regular relations of the clan ;
but their spirit would be base — magic, not religion, —
and a clear step down towards the savage worship of
evil spirits. Then came changes when flocks and herds
increased, when separate families were formed, when
manners grew less barbarous. The heap of stones on
which the blood was poured became an altar, and the
post or single stone on which the blood was dashed
grew into an idol, which might afterwards require a
temple and a priest. But long before this the revolting
scramble for the divine flesh was turned into a sacrificial
feast of communion with the god and rejoicing
before him ; and the parts that could no longer be
eaten were decently disposed of by burning. So also
the drinking of blood was replaced by pouring it out,
and this a^ain on minor occasions might come to be

268 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

replaced by symbols like red paint or the pouring out
of wine. Things like these might be fair developments ;
but others were destructive of the system. When
families began to settle down by themselves, the totems
they or their members chose became family or private
gods, and the old clan totem was forgotten. And as
they had looked up of old to the clan-god as their
animal ancestor, now they turned it round, and began
to make gods of human ancestors. Meanwhile the
god's connection with the animal species was loosened
in every direction. The symbolism was obscured by
tree totems and plant totems, and the trust which was
placed in a protector threw the emphasis on his divine
side and developed more human or at any rate less
bestial conceptions of him. He might be incarnate like
the Apis bull in an individual animal, he might be figured
as a man with the animal's head, or he might stand out in
clear divinity with the animal no more than sacred to
him, or in course of time his connection with it might
be entirely forgotten. So too the old idea of communion
through the blood of the totem animal gave place to
a sacrifice to the god ; and this again opened out whole
theories of gifts to the god to win his favour.

Again, a clan might flourish in the world. It might
form a permanent union with other clans ; and then the
single god of one clan might become one of the gods of
all the clans. Polytheism seems to have arisen largely
in this way, though there were doubtless other ways too.
Family gods and ancestors not uncommonly became
gods of a larger circle without displacing other gods.
The powers of nature are sundry : and any number of

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 269

them might be worshipped together. Superstitions also
are sundry ; and in later times, though only in later
times, a superstition might be developed into religion
by a change of attitude to the spirit concerned, as when
the Eaging Spirit which was an evil to be averted on
the do ut abeas principle was turned into Zeus the
Gracious, the averter of evil.^ There must already have
been gracious gods before such an evil was changed into
their likeness.

Polytheism might form a hierarchy of gods from the
first without any real approach to monotheism, for the
logic of conquest would often make the god of the
dominant clan or family the dominant god of all the
clans. Then in some cases an approach might be made
to pantheism (not to monotheism) by viewing the rest of
the gods as aspects of the One. But more commonly,
at first perhaps always, they were gradually and in an
irregular way limited to particular functions ; and
presently mythology would come in to explain and
smooth away some of the resulting incongruities and
confusions. But when once this stage of almost conscious
invention was reached, there was nothing to hinder the
indefinite multiplication of inferior or functional gods.
The Eomans, for instance, have been SeLaiSatfiovea-repoi
in all ages, endeavouring to make life safe and pleasant
as well as holy by the wholesale manufacture of gods
(they called them saints in later times) to preside over
every aspect of Nature and every imaginable occupation
of men. However, we need not trace down the history
of ancient and modern indigitamenta.

^ Miss Harrison, Prolegomena, 28.

270 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Or again, a clan might come clown in the world, or
even be wiped out in war. Then the survivors might
seek refuge with some other tribe, and even bring their
gods with them ; but they were very commonly driven
out into the mountain, the desert or the swamp, a
remnant of broken men with faith confounded. It
may be that the archeeologists have allowed for these
terrible uprootings as a source of savagery : the student
of history is never allowed to forget them. We see a
little of them in the anarchy of Germany in Eoman
times ; but for their full significance we must look
elsewhere. Take some of the worst parts of the world.
The Bushmen have been driven southward into the
Kalahari desert ; and the worst of the negroes are those
crowded to the West Coast by successive waves of
invasion. From their affinity to the Bororos of Brazil
we gather that the Tehuelches of Patagonia are exiles
from the sunnier north, perhaps in their turn driving
before them the Yahgans of Fuegia ; and the astounding
multipHcity of Columbian and Alaskan languages would
seem to shew that here again we have no more than
wrecks and remnants of tribes which have seen better
days. So elsewhere : the wonder is not that the corners
of the earth are held by savages, but that any civilization
has managed to survive.

For it is hardly possible to exaggerate the mischief
done by these violent breakings-up of clans. A change
of religion is at best the most unsettling of all changes
for serious persons, and nothing but absolute purity of
motive can prevent it from being utterly demoralizing.
There is no more pathetic sight in our time than the

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 271

man who feels the glamour of the Gospel, and would
gladly embrace its glorious promises for this life and
for life eternal, if only Truth would let him listen to
the su'en song. But when he renounces the light of
past ages and goes out into the cold grey shadows of
scepticism, he is supported more than he knows by the
civilization of the Christian state around him, and com-
forts himself that he still worships Truth, and if Christ
has failed him, Truth has not deceived him. This is no
such bankruptcy of faith as the broken clansman's who
has lost his all. The god in whom he trusted has con-
founded him ; his state is no more ; he has no science for a
refuge — only magic. What wonder if he turns away, hope-
less, listless, and confounded, to animalism and savagery ?
We might picture totemism as a high religion if we
dwelt on the absence of priest and temple, sacrifice and
image, and on its central idea of communion. In these
respects it is like the very highest. " And I saw no
temple therein." But such a picture would be onesided
and misleading. In fact, it was a low religion, which
left some of the most elementary ideas undeveloped.
It was not even a definite monotheism or a definite
polytheism, but held both systems in solution. It was
in so far monotheistic that the clan had but one god,
and looked up to him as the highest being they could
imagine. Indeed, they could not credit him with less
than power to help them and willingness to use it. But
the highest they could imagine was sensuous in form
and low in kind. They had small thought of

A God of truth and witliout iniquity,
Just and right is he.

272 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Nor was he a whit more real than the gods of hostile
clans, or the spirits whom no clan worshipped : only
they trusted he was stronger. Thus, if they remained
faithful to him, as they might if they came to base their
trust on moral attributes, they might advance to
monotheism ; but if for any reason they called in other
gods, as every people did but Israel,^ then the broad
road of polytheism lay straight before them.

Another fundamental idea was beyond the reach of
totemism, for it took no direct note of personal sin.
Nor could it ; for the god's relation was with the clan,
not with the individual. Yet it implied a good deal that
might develop the sense of guilt. As no loyal clansman
would doubt the god's power as long as the clan remained
in being, misfortune could only be his message that
somebody had offended against him. Who was that ?
Let him be stoned like Achan for bringing such danger
on the clan ; and further, let the god be appeased by a
solemn renewal of the broken' covenant. But when the
parts which were not eaten were burned as well as the
parts which could not be eaten, and when this burning
was further regarded as a way of giving them to the god,
the renewing rite became a feast on a sacrifice offered to
the god : and as feasting was in this case unseemly, the
sacrifice which remained became a sacrifice of expiation.

1 The question of an early monotheism in Babylonia is hardly ripe for
the general student. If a real monotheism was reached — one personal
God and no more — it would have a high significance in some directions ;
but the fact would remain that it did not last in Babylonia as it did in
Israel. It would be at most a passing phase of thought. So far, however,
as I can learn, it was rather a pantheistic confusion of the Indian sort
than a genuine monotheism.

It was much the same in Egypt— monism, but not monotheism.

PRIMtTIVE llELlGION 273

One step further, though it may not have been taken
for some time. If the god's displeasure is shewn by
misfortune to the clan, is it not equally shewn
by sickness and misfortune to families and individuals ?
These would be due to much the same causes, and have
to be expiated in much the same way. But if con-
science is invited to find out what is wrong, where
will it stop ? In the totemistic stage a man might feel
pretty clear if he was true to the clan, and had no
dealings with strange gods ; but there was plenty of room
for sin when polytheism came in, with its perpetual
suggestion that even an unknown god ought not to be
left without his offering. The fear of offending only
increased in the course of time, when antiquated
observances and elaborated ceremonials multiplied
occasions of transgression. But the greater the number
of things commanded, the greater the merit that might
be laid up by doing them. So the Pharisee of
heathenism never doubted of being able to give the gods
their due till conscience began to whisper that pure
hands are nothing without a pure heart. This made
a new difficulty. Observances can be brought within
compass by proper diligence ; but there is no limit to
the sin that may lurk in thoughts and intents of the heart.
But if moral sin was graver than ceremonial, the usual
expiations might not suffice. Yet expiation must be had
at any cost. Unless the gods were quite implacable, there
must be sacrifices of greater power, if only they could be
discovered. So some restored old and barbarous rites,
while others devised new and horrible expiations. If
a burnt offering was not enough, they could give a

VOL. I. — 18

274 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

hecatomb ; if beasts were of no avail, they could ofi'er
men ; if the gods gave no answer, they could stir infernal
powers to their help. " Shall I give ray firstborn for
my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul ? " This is the culminating stage of terror in religion,
for it is not vague as with savages, but sharply pointed
Iby the horrors of remorse. The worst abominations of
the old religions arose in this way, from the strainings
of a guilty conscience after some such full, perfect, and
sufficient sacrifice and satisfaction as might for ever silence
the accusing memory of past misdoings. The darkest
rites of the ancient worships, both Semitic and European,
may all be understood as the search for a true atoning
sacrifice.

In some ways polytheism marks a decline from
totemism. It forsook once for all the road which might
have led to monotheism, and never regained it. The
idea of deity was now confused by a discordant crowd of
gods which could only be given a semblance of order by
letting them melt into one another, or by putting a Zeus
or an Odin at the head of them. But this, like the
Golden Bull, was organizing anarchy and calling it a
constitution. Further, the practice of communion with
the god was higher than that of sacrifice to the gods
which partly replaced it; and sacrifice itself was
deformed with fantastic and immoral rites. On the
other hand, the idea of deity was raised by separation
from the animal, especially in the higher or anthro-
pomorphic forms of polytheism ; and the tribes and
nations which now became possible gave a wider
experience of things divine and human. It was narrow

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 275

still, but sometimes vivid. Eeligion was firmly linked
to public duty : and it was well that human restless-
ness and greed should have to bear the heavy yoke
of custom till conscience was awake enough to fret
against it. Greece and Eome could value a man for
courage or beauty, wealth or family, intellect or skill ;
but in the days of liberty they had no respect for man as
man. Class feeling made it hard, and slavery made it
impossible. So they clung for very life to the custom
which settled the order of society. If that was changed,
they had no protection. So custom, and even the codes
of law from Hammurabi downward, claimed a divine
sanction, which vanished but slowly in the course of ages.
Even Greece hardly reached the idea that if law is
divine, particular laws are human, and may be freely
changed by men as need arises. Only Eome fully
grasped it. But religion is the most persistent of all
custom ; and Eome herself only ventured on genuine
toleration under Constantine, and then only till the time
of Theodosius.

Meanwhile there was a real gain in having the world
"filled with gods," though filled in a mechanical way
with gods of a low sort. Even the abominations devised
in the search for atonement marked a real advance, in so
far as they were prompted by a deeper sense of sin, and
therefore by a fuller knowledge of human nature. Nor
can we doubt that the moral power of religion showed
itself in polytheism wherever it was a real belief. It
was at best low, debased with irrational observances and
confused with what Origen calls its godless multitude of
gods. Such however as it was, it thoroughly pervaded

276 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

the outward life ; and if scoffers were never wanting,
neither was genuine devotion. It worked in the main
like monotheism, though on a lower plane. Indeed, it is
not always easy to draw a clear line of distinction
between monotheism and polytheism. A believer in
many gods may attach himself to one of them, and
almost forget the rest ; while a believer in one god may
have no doubt that there are many more, though perhaps
he calls them saints or devils. These men are both
practically polytheists, for they both conceive of one god
as limited by others in the polytheistic way, and are both
likely to worship him in the polytheistic way. So nearly,
indeed, does polytheism approach these lowest forms of
monotheism that in practice there may be little differ-
ence between them.

The noblest part of polytheism is its protest, as given
by the writer de mysteriis ^gyptiorum, that " the gods have
not forsaken the earth, but pervade it like the sunshine " ;
and its teaching that the gods are a very present refuge
in time of trouble has made it an enduring force in
history. It stood so far for truth ; and therefore criticism
and philosophy exposed its errors in vain, and even
those lower forms of monotheism which have no God
immanent in the world were often defeated. Faith in
immortal finite gods outlived sophists and philosophers,
and was not very generally shaken even by the deep unrest
of the Augustan age. Christianity was a more formidable
enemy, and seemed for a while to carry all before it ; but
polytheism returned as soon as Christ's true manhood
was forgotten. The theological abstraction which
remained was forgotten too in East and West. Men

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 277

turned away (and small blame to them so far) in quest
of more human and more kindly deities than the Euler
of the Dies irce ; and to this day we see the living image
of ancient heathenism in every country where they
worship saints. Polytheism has done a work in history,
like the Jewish law ; yet, as with the Jewish law,
that work was not to make the decisive advance,
but to shew that it would have to be made from
some other side — to shew that there is no firm
foothold between one personal all-sovereign God and
the gulf of pantheism.

It must be allowed that polytheism supplied the most
ample means of revelation. A true believer in the gods
had much to say on that head ; and we can see pretty
well what it was from the rebuke that was afterwards
given to the Christians. The gods, he would say — the
gods are living gods and not a fable. They conversed
with men, and sometimes lived among them in a better
age than ours. They guided in their labours, and
delivered from their perils, the heroes and benefactors of
men. They revealed the rites of worship handed down to
us, and ordained the good old laws and customs of our
city. Nor have they now forsaken us. They give us
the fruits of the earth, our harvest and our vintage, and
all the rest of the good things of life. They signify their
will to holy men in visions and ecstatic inspiration,
to the pious inquirer by oracles and dreams and omens,
to an offending city by pestilence and famine and defeat
in battle, to wicked and ungrateful men by sickness and
misfortune. Their favour has built up the city's
greatness, and their wrath will overthrow it if we

278 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

change their laws, neglect their worship, or despise the
warnings they send us.

Something of this kind might be the answer which a
heathen of the better sort would give to them that
questioned him. It is not wanting in earnestness and
dignity, or in a genuinely religious faith in higher powers
who care for us and hear our prayer. Nevertheless this is
neither a rational nor a moral conception of things
divine. In the first place, it has no basis of historic
truth. The facts alleged from the past are either
myths or legends of the flimsiest sort, and would often
be unedifying if they could be supposed true. The tales
that were told of the gods were a scandal from the
time of Xenophanes onward ; and the customs of
worship founded on them needed a good deal of allegory
to get them into some sort of agreement with decency
and common sense. Even so, they gave abundance of
occasion for Cynics and Christians to blaspheme.
Meanwhile the man in the street got his excuse for
" thinking that lust is godliness," ^ and Clement of
Alexandria had something to say for his position that
the beasts of Egypt were better than the gods of Greece.^
It is easy to ridicule messages conveyed in oracles and
omens ; but we shall need some care if we are to see
clearly why they were so unsatisfactory to reason and
conscience. Given that there are gods, it was not
unreasonable to expect signs of their will ; and to look
for them in the whole range of phenomena, for ex-
perience only could point out the particular phenomena

^ Cletn. Al., Protr. 60, p. 53 : ti-]v aKoKaaiav evaejieiap vo/xl^ovTef.
^ Ibid. 39, p. 33 : el Kai Oripia, dXX' ov /xoixi-Ka., k.t.X.

primitivp: religion 279

in which they might be expected. So far the polytheists
reasoned well ; nor does the system seem to have been a
systematic imposture. An element of imposture there
must have been, for prophets were of all sorts, like the
people ; but for the same reason it cannot have been
wholly or even chiefly an imposture. The mistake was
in the utter crudeness of the appeal to experience. No
principle of revelation was looked for, no serious reason
was given why one thing rather than another should be
a sign. If tradition said that a clap of thunder, a weasel
across the road, the rustling of the oaks at Dodona, the
flight of a bird, or the state of a victim's entrails,
portended this or that, there w\as an end of the matter.
Yet tradition was at best a vague report from the
past, which present experience was piously believed to
confirm. We have precisely similar notions current in
our own time, like the bad luck of thirteen at dinner,
or of marriage on a Friday ; and these are similarly
unrelated to experience. The difference is that the
ancient superstitious gained a semblance of rationality
at the cost of a scandal to religion.

Again, given that this or that is a sign, how is its
meaning to be ascertained ? Not surely by the feeling
of the moment, but by reference to character and life as
a whole. A dream or an omen comes to me ; and we
will assume that it is a message from the gods. But
if even a lawyer or a doctor sees that our question
generally involves many things we never thought of,
I cannot safely take for granted that the divine message
refers solely to the scheme I have in hand just now.
However, let it pass : we will assume this too. There

280 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

is still the question what the sign means. It may be
clear ; but such signs are most commonly ambiguous,
unless their meaning is fixed by reports of good or bad
luck following similar signs in past time : and if such
reports are not to be trusted, I am thrown back on
general considerations of justice and expediency, and am
none the wiser for my special signs. The polytheists
could not help seeing that such signs need interpreters,
and interpreters were not wanting ; but they never were
able to find reasonable and moral principles of inter-
pretation. It was not reasonable to rest everything on
unverified tradition ; and it was neither moral nor
reasonable to make the interpretation depend on such
technical skill as the most immoral of men might have
in the fullest measure. Sooner or later the thought was
sure to come, that messages of this kind were no credit
to the gods, if they really sent them.

But there was a more general weakness in these
polytheistic ways of thinking. There can be no idea
of revelation without some idea of a divine person to
give it, and of a human person to receive it. A thing
cannot give one, and an automaton cannot receive one.
Nor can the idea be clear without the clear conception
of personality divine and human which was wanting in
the earlier religions, and is wanting even now in the
backward religions. There could be no clearness in
those early forms of thought which represented the
divine by spirits of more or less indefinite personality,
the human by clans from which the family, and even
the individual, was not sharply distinguished : and in
the most modern the confusion returns whenever the

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 281

divine is obscured by pantheistic vagueness, or the
human is merged in some great machine of church or
state which undertakes for him the part of Providence
and conscience.

The conception of divine personality made some
progress under the influences of polytheism. In its
lower forms, like the Semitic or the Latin, the gods
are still in the main personifications and abstractions ;
but they become very human in such higher developments
as the Greek or the Scandinavian. Here was an advance :
it may be ^ that men need to see first the weakness of
man in gods before they can see the power of God in
man. Human gods may form a passage from bestial
spirits to a divine God. But if they mark an advance,
they mark also a limitation, for they are human in too
gross a way. In the main they are matter of fact
copies of men just as they were, or very little idealized.
Thus good and bad were reflected on the gods without
distinction, so that everything which narrows and
debases human personality similarly narrowed and
debased the divine ideal. Of course, gods varied in
character like men, and some of them are fine creations.
Zeus and Athena are vastly nobler figures than a stupid
Ares or a malicious Hera. But vices are more easily
copied than virtue ; and every crime could be abundantly
justified by the example of gods — not uncommonly by
that of Zeus himself. If gods like these could lift
the conception of revelation a little higher than the
totemistic beasts had left it, this was as much as they
could do.

^ Julia Wedgwood, Message of Israel, 82.

282 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Had the polytheists been on the right road the
teaching of history would have helped them forward :
instead of this, it brought confusion on these crude
conceptions, and shewed the urgent need of reforming
them. Yet reform proved impossible. There might
have been a real advance if the gods could have been
cleansed and put in true subordination to some better
Father of gods and men than the Zeus of the legends ;
and something of this kind seems to be what the best
and purest minds of Greece were feeling after, from
Xenophanes to Porphyry. Nor is it unworthily expressed
in the highest flights of ^Eschylus and Plato. But they
never fully reached it. ^schylus could not shake off
his belief in the envy of the gods : and though Plato
rose above this, he made matter a real limitation of the
divine. In fact, the legends prevented any general
advance. Nothing was gained by shewing the absurdity
of some of the more scandalous tales ; and by the time
they were all discredited they had made it for ever
impossible to bring together the ideas of gods and virtue.
Plato was for vigorous measures, forgetting that myths
which have grown up of themselves cannot be reshaped
by deliberate reforms. Others put pious meanings on
them ; but there was no persuading Common men to
lift up their hearts to something better than the gods.
The greatness of the difficulty may be seen from the
desperate efforts to escape it. The Epicureans could
find no better plan than that of respectfully moving the
gods upstairs out of the way. They were too blessed
forsooth to concern themselves with the affairs of men.
Euhemerists and others tried every device of allegory,

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 283

and the Eclectics of the third century after Christ made
all the gods of all the nations broken lights of one far-
off impersonal Supreme. This was no true monotheism
even for the philosophers ; and the world in general
remained as polytheistic— and as immoral — as ever.
The mixture of passionate devotion and gross licentious-
ness in Apuleius is characteristic ; and the austere figure
of Julian in the ribald processions at Antioch bears
witness that heathenism died unreformed, and shameless
to the last. The worst of the matter was that polytheism
misled not only its devotees, but the reformers themselves.
In their undiscriminating zeal to root out the undis-
criminating anthropomorphism which had done the
mischief, they denied the Supreme both good and evil
indiscriminately, till they had refined away personality
itself as too anthropomorphic. They saw no escape
from the devil of polytheism but by rushing headlong
into the deep sea of pantheism.

Nor was the conception of human personality much
more advanced. In patriarchal times the family was
the unit, the individual an item of it which in many
ways did not concern outsiders at all. On that footing
the earliest states commonly dealt with him. The
family was responsible for its members, and shared the
guilt of its head. Achan's children are stoned with
him, and Abraham offers Isaac without a thought that
his son's life is not absolutely his to give. Even when
this stage was outgrown, small account was taken of the
individual. In Asia he was " the king's animal," as he
still is in Siam — food for powder, or its equivalent in
the language of Nebuchadnezzar or Xerxes. The

284 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

excellent majesty of an Eastern king is summed up in
" Whom he would he slew, and whom he would he kept
alive." In Europe things were often different. The
Greek was a free citizen, and the Roman did not cease
to boast under the Empire that he was subject to
law, not to the caprice of one man like the Persians.
Nevertheless, the individual was wholly subordinated to
the state in the good old times of Greece and Eome ;
and the personal freedom he gained later was due rather
to the decay of ancient custom than to any generally
higher estimate of his personal value. It was something
to have the rearing of children made a trust rather than
the property it had been in patriarchal times ; but the
trust was rather for the state than for the child.
Sparta may have avowed it more openly than Athens ;
but the purpose of education in early times, both in
Greece and Eome, was in the first place rather to turn
out useful citizens than to make the best of the
individual. The Greeks were always too refined to
care much for the Eoman beast-fights ; but even they
did not respect human life for its own sake. Within
the state they began with exposure of infants, and
finished with proscriptions of men ; and outside it the
foreigner had no rights, though treaties must be kept
for the sake of our own gods. Polytheism exasperated
war, not indeed with religious fanaticism — only Persians
destroyed temples for that reason — but with the feeling
that we have nothing in common with an enemy who
worships other gods. And war was the chief source
of slavery ; and slavery was the chief bar to a full
recognition of human personality. In citizens, well ;

PRIMITIVE RELIGION 285

but slaves are things, not persons, and freedmen and
workmen were not much better than slaves. Plato
himself could not get beyond this. Polytheism stopped
all advance in this direction till first the mysteries and
Stoicism, and then Christianity with more success,
brought out the idea that men are persons as men, and
not in virtue of some more limited conditions.

LECTURE XII.

GREECE.

We need not stop to consider whether the Aryans or
Indo-Europeans had a single clear-cut primitive religion,
or whether they are not as a single race more or less
a figment of the philologists. Certainly it is hard to
believe that peoples physically and morally so different
as Celts and Teutons are as near akin as their languages
would indicate. However that may be, the earliest
Aryan religions in western Asia and the Mediterranean
region seem to have gathered round the powers of Nature
— the sky and the cloud, the sun and the moon, the
night and the dawn, the fire and the wind.^ This is the
surface ; but in Greece there was a dark background of
magic superstitions and " aversions " of evil beings ; and
there must have been the same sort of thing elsewhere.
So far as we find ancestor-worship, it is at any rate
subordinate ; though the traces of totemism are enough
to indicate that it had been a factor of religion in pre-
historic times.

These early religions have a general likeness all the
way from Italy to India, though there must have been

^ Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities, 414 (trans. Jevons), counts these

" phonetically safe."

286

GREECE 287

specific differences everywhere. In Greece, for example,
the gods of the sea are more prominent, in Italy those
of agriculture ; and the poetic element, so conspicuous
in Greece and India, is almost wanting with the Latins
and the Slavs. But this earlier type of religion broke
down in divers ways. In Persia it became an austere
dualism, in India a polytheistic pantheism, in Greece a
frankly anthropomorphic polytheism, while in Eome the
gods were little more than abstractions till Greek influ-
ence was felt, and religion remained to the end a part
of the discipline of the State. The toleration of the
earlier Empire was more laxity than principle, and the
real toleration of the Edict of Milan was not lasting.
Aryan religion might be debased into magic, it might
turn to a dualism of good and evil, it might lose itself
in pantheism, it might be replaced by philosophy ; but
from first to last it never developed into the genuine
monotheism whose first word is. Thou shalt have no
other gods before me. If individuals reached anything
above a pantheistic monism, they always had to begin
by giving up the first principles of polytheism.

In the whole range of this great development there is
no more instructive contrast than that of Greece with
India in one direction, with Eome in the other. Leav-
ing Eome till we come to her influence on Christianity,
let us look at India. The old pantheon of the Vedas
must have grown up in lands of a generally European
and Mediterranean character, for in fauna and flora even
Afghanistan is much more akin to Greece and Italy
than to the basin of the Ganges. So at first sight it
does not differ very greatly from what the Greek would

288 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

seem to have been at a somewhat later date. Its
general structure is much the same, though the indi-
vidual gods correspond imperfectly to each other. But
we notice already a significant difference in the way the
gods are spoken of. If the Greek was often in doubt
what god to address, or by what name to address him,
he was clear upon the whole (I mean in early times)
that gods have individual differences. There were plenty
of confusions ; but still distinction is the rule, confusion
the exception. Even conflations like Apollo and Dio-
nysus are individual enough. In India confusion is the
rule, for if the gods have names they have not much
individual character. In a different way, they are
almost as abstract as those of Eome ; and there was no
strong State to keep them apart with fixed and settled
rites of worship for each. So there was already a ten-
dency to merge them into one another and look on them
as aspects of One. But if the gods represented powers
of Nature, and the thought which reached the One was
only a process of unification, there was nothing to carry
it outside the order of Nature. The forces which had
been distributed through the parts of the world were
now gathered into a single Force ; and that was all.
Hence the result was pantheism.

But the Greeks on their rocky coasts were as much
impressed by the changes and variety of Nature as the
Indians had been by its exuberance and mystery. The
language of the rolling sea is not the language of the
flowing Ganges. The landsmen of India feared the
" black water," the mountaineers of Israel beheld from
afar their symbol of the barren struggles of restless

GREECE 289

wickedness ; but to the lonicans of Europe and Asia its
bright blue waters were an inspiration. Nor is the
difference less between the clear hills of Greece and the
dank forests of the Indian plains. The Greeks might
imagine sirens and centaurs, but they never rioted in
monsters as they might have done if they had lived in
villages by the side of the mysterious jungle and seen
its abounding wealth of life, from the royal tigers down-
ward. Their own bright world was a charm and a
fascination : its mystery they felt, but they never let it
crush them.

Now, while uniformity can be represented by abstrac-
tions, and mystery must be hinted by symbols, variety
can only be expressed in the likeness of men. All ages
have instinctively personified the changing face of Nature.
Thus, while the spirits oft he nether world are often
grotesque like Indian gods, the Olympians of Homer are
men, whatever else they are. Zeus and the gods are made
in the image and after the likeness of Agamemnon and the
men. They are born in time, and have their favoured
homes. They feast and quarrel and fight, and burst
with laughter like their worshippers. Their one sub-
stantial difference from men is immortality : and this is
the distinctive mark of a god from Homer's time to the
"last of the heroes," as the oracle calls Cleomedes of
Astypalsea. So in Christian times, while the Latins
imaged eternal life in a civitas Dei, the Greeks explained
it as immortality. Ignatius ^ already speaks of the Lord's
Supper as (f^dpfiaKov a6avaaia<i, and most of his succes-
sors find the " deification " of the Christian in the gift

1 Ign. Eph. 20.
VOL. I. — 19

290 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

of immortality. It is not without need that St. Paul ^
so sharply marks off in advance the Christian conception
of eternal life as something more than honour and glory
and incorruption.

However, there was upon the whole a great advance
in this view of the gods. Human feeling is higher than
the uniformity of nature, and the nature-gods became
friends of men as soon as they were viewed as men.
Hence we find in Greece a primitive familiarity of gods
and men which may remind us of Genesis, but is foreign
to the genius of Italy. It seemed natural for Zeus to
share the feasts of the blameless Ethiopians, or for
Poseidon to labour at the walls of Troy, whereas the
relations of Numa with Egeria are exceptional at Pome.
This intimacy of gods and men is (among the Aryans)
peculiarly Greek. There is not much of it among the
Teutons, though their gods are as human as those of
Homer, differing from men chiefly in their powers of
magic.2 If Odin is called All-father, the thought is left
vague ; and in any case he is no Father of the Vanir.
He was not originally the greatest of the gods ; and his
name at the head of every royal pedigree seems a late
insertion. There are no stories like those of lo and
Europa, no demigods like Perseus and Hercules. The
adventures of the gods are rather with the giantesses

1 Rom. ii 7.

- Tegner's Frithiof Sagais essentially a Christian poem, notwithstanding
its heathen dress. Nothing can be more unlike the general spirit of the
North than its attitude towards magic. Frithiof cuts up his magic ring
in he storm at sea, runs his magic ship ashore when he comes to King
Ring, and in the hour of sore temptation flings away his magic sword.
When all this is done he stands out in his true greatness, simply as a
man. Such, I take it, is meant to be the moral of the poem.

GREECE 291

— Eindr and Gerdhr and Skadhi — than with women of
mortal birth, and the heroes of the North are men and
nothing more.

So the Greeks never found an answer to Homer's old
problem of the difference between a god and a man. The
excellence of gods was human, and the excellence of men
was divine. Unlike the clear-cut Latin deus, their 6eo<i
was so fluid, so vague, so human, that when once Lysander
had been deified as a living man, the custom spread
rapidly. Barbarians made gods of their kings from the
Pharaohs of Egypt to the Jubas of Mauritania ; but the
Greeks, to do them justice, worshipped rather beneficence
than mere power. Deification was no doubt a fulsome
compliment and a very cheap one, sometimes meaning
exactly what we mean by a vote of thanks; yet there
was often real gratitude behind it. If some deifications
represent but passing enthusiasms and flatteries, others
were more permanent. The great Eoman benefactor
Flamininus was not forgotten. It was less the servility
of the Senate than the gratitude of the provinces which
pressed on Augustus the honours of a god : and foremost
in the provinces were Greek cities like Pergamus —
" where Satan dwelleth," grimly adds St. John.^

We shall see presently the bearing of this anthropo-
morphic thought on Christian and modern times ; but
for the present we must return to the decay of the
Olympian theology.

Though a perfect philosophy must be a true religion
so far as it goes, and a perfect religion must rest on a
true philosophy, there was a broad difference of aim and

^ Apoc. ii 13u

292 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

character between Greek philosophy and Greek polytheism.
As soon as truth and virtue were set up as aims, it was
clear that seekers after truth might set aside a religion
which only spoke for custom, and that the quest of virtue
would not be helped by ceremonials for which no moral
reason could be given. Not that the philosophers ever
expressly renounced the Olympian gods. Even the
Epicureans treated them with formal respect, and others
with something more, for an atheist or two like Diagoras
is not worth counting. At the same time they never
admitted them as working parts of their systems. The
Zeus of Plato or of the Stoics has very little in common
with the Zeus of Homer ; and the rest of the gods are
purely ornamental. In scientific language, they are
epiphenomena, for they make no difference in the

results.

The earlier Ionian philosophers represent science
rather than metaphysics or religion, and therefore have
httle to do with the conception of the knowledge of God.
Thales and his successors are agreed in looking to one
form of matter or another as the first principle of all
things — the apxv, as Anaximander first called it. The
Eleatics also stood for unity, though Xenophanes is
undecided between an ideal and a material unity, and
both views are represented among his successors. The
pluralists of the fifth century, who assumed many original
substances instead of one, advanced to the distinction of
moving cause from matter ; but upon the whole they too
keep inside the region of cosmology. Yet the ethical
and religious elements in philosophy are steadily gaining
on the scientific. Thus Pythagoras mixed up with it

GREECE 293

an Egyptian doctrine of transmigration, Xenophanes a
denunciation of anthropomorphic gods, and Heraclitus
a protest against sacrifice, while Empedocles enunciated
the principle that like is known by like. But a still
more important step was taken when Anaxagoras threw
down the hint (for he did not work it out) that " all
things lay in confusion together : then came mind and
ordered them." So complete an abandonment of the
purely scientific ground could not remain unchallenged.
Democritus replied with a system of mechanical
naturalism, accounting for the order of the world by he
blind movement of atoms, as the Epicureans did later.
But Democritus never thought out thought itself, so that
he saw no difficulty in joining ethics of freedom to his
necessarian physics.

Halting for a moment about the middle of the fifth
century B.C., we see that some of the characteristic lines
of Greek philosophy had been already laid down. Thus
the Eleatics had raised the question of Being, and
Anaxagoras and Democritus were agreed in stating the
problem as a passage from appearance to reality.
Anaxagoras had thrown out the hint that order was
the work of mind ; while Democritus appears to make
knowledge the highest good, and claims the whole
world for the wise man's country. But there is no
trace yet of any new idea of revelation.

Meanwhile Democritus on one side and the Sophists
on the other stand for the scepticism of an age of
transition. Change was rapid in the generation after
Marathon, when Athens was founding not only a new
Empire, but a new kind of empire on the face of the

294 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

earth. There is no such imsettler of old religion as
commerce, whether in the fifth century or the first, or
again in the nineteenth. It crumbled first Greek
polytheism, then Eoman ; and now it is crumbling —
some say Christianity, but the weakness it has found
out belongs rather to those Latin conceptions of
Christianity which the Eeformation by no means
rooted out from northern Europe. However, we can
understand the appearance in an age so like our own
of Democritus with a mechanical system of physics,
and of the Sophists with their disbelief of absolute
truth as an attainable thing. In doubting the certainty
of knowledge they were thoroughly modern ; but their
shameless readiness to argue on either side (as if they
were advocates) on any thesis whatever was rather a
Greek than a modern piece of rhetorical bravado.

Times of doubt are also times of renewed belief.
Doubt has always dashed in vain upon the solid rock
of human faith in truth. It can but scour the sand
away, and show it more deeply rooted than we knew.
The great work of Socrates, and of Plato after him, was
partly to maintain against the Sophists that truth and
right are not conventions, but things of which we can
have true knowledge ; partly to shift the stress of
philosophy to man instead of nature. On one side it
was a protest against the irdvrwv /xerpov avOpconro'i of
Protagoras ; on the other it looked to human nature as
the clue to its problems. Again, it worked not like
the Sophists by accepting the objections of each school
to the doctrines of the next, and concluding that truth
is beyond us, but by careful definitions and siftings of

GREECE 295

arguments — a process carried further and systematized
by Aristotle.

Perhaps Plato himself did not exactly know how
much of his thought he owed to Socrates, and how much
was strictly his own ; but however that may be, the
ethical advance he marks is enormous. If he uses
polytheistic language, especially in his myths, he uses
it only for ornament and garnish, or sometimes ironically.
For all serious purposes he breaks entirely with the
popular religion. He cannot endure gods with passions,
gods with vices (especially envy), or gods in human form.
He turns away from the revelations of polytheism as
having neither serious nor likely proofs, rejecting even
astrology with the rest, and sinks religion in philosophy,
taking that for our one available test of truth and guide
of life, " unless indeed some more sure divine word
should come to us."

Pending this, he goes as nearly by the cold light of
reason as a poetic nature and a spiritual instinct will
allow him. Atheism is as hateful to him as superstition.
There must be a personal origin for a world which is
derived : and that origin must be spirit to explain its
motion, reason to explain its order and beauty, goodness
to explain the rule of justice in it. God is the highest
idea of goodness and perfection, seeing all, guiding all,
caring for all. His power is limited only by his own
moral nature (for he cannot wish to change), by the
permanence of evil (for there must always be evil to
contrast with good), and by the intractable qualities of
matter.

It is beyond my purpose, and in truth beyond my

296 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

capacity, to enter on any general discussion of the
philosophy of Plato and Aristotle ; nor should I care in
any case to stand within the danger of my distinguished
colleague at Aberdeen. One question, however, cannot
be passed over, for it must have occurred to you already.
What has all this philosophy to do with revelation ? If
everything is to be worked out by man, where is the
need or the room for a revelation ? Well, if by revela-
tion we mean a formal communication from heaven, the
only trace (among the Greeks) of such an idea is in the
appeal of the Pythagoreans in Eoman times to the life
and sayings of their founder. This may dimly remind
us of the Christians, and indeed is not unlikely to have
been more or less suggested by their example. But if
a wider sense be given (as we have given it) to revela-
tion, we shall find plenty of it in Greek philosophy. Of
course it is possible enough to use the philosophical
method in the interest of mechanical or agnostic theories ;
and some of the ancients did so use it, as some of the
moderns use it now. But all the better philosophers
started with two clear convictions — that there is a
spark of the divine in man, and that the laws of the
world which he discovers are divine thought. The one
was inherited from polytheism, the other the acquisition
of a science which was not irreligious ; and the two
together amount nearly to what we meant by saying
that God's image within recognizes God's truth without.
This, as we have seen, is revelation ; and it is none the
less revelation for coming to us in one way rather than
another. So long as we recognize both its elements we
may take it either from the divine side as the Jews

GREECE 297

did, or from the human Hke the Greeks. Either plan
has its advantages; and if the Greek method lends
itself to irreligion, it is no way irreligious in itself.
Greek and Jew alike broke down in the end ; but if we
compare the later philosophy with Pharisaism, we may
fairly question whether it was the greater failure of
the two.

The Greeks had their limitations like the rest of
us. With all their thirst for knowledge, their splendid
power of thinking, their command of language, their
exquisite sense of order and beauty, their genuine religion
and passion for abstract truth, they never made truth to
cover the entire scope of life. For instance, though they
were by far the most scientific of ancient nations, they
were commonly wanting in patience for toilsome re-
search and accurate statement of scientific facts. Thus
Hipparchus and Eratosthenes are exceptions in astronomy,
and Aristotle in zoology, — his work on the Cephalopods
was not outgrown half a century ago. But in the main the
Greek was too much of an artist to have a genuine love
of truth as truth in all its forms. If his great classics
are consummate works of art, he was in his best days
too full of national pride to let even the idea of universal
history dawn on him — that the beliefs and struggles of
uncouth barbarian tribes are not without a meaning and
a value for the order of history. If his feeling of order
and beauty in the world has never been surpassed, so
much the harder did he find it to overcome his dislike
of things ungraceful or ugly, and to see that the most
repulsive of them have their place and value even for
the order and beauty which he loved. Again, his ad-

298 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

miration of man was rather (esthetic than moral. It was
rather of outside things like mind and beauty than of
man as man, and therefore as will. For this reason he
never reached any true respect for his neighbour's rights ;
so that when once his political system was thoroughly
disordered there was nothing to check the violence of
faction till Eome broke in to stop the civil strife and
bloodshed. In a word, he was too onesidedly artistic to
see the unity of life and truth. He could follow truth
(no man better) in philosophy or in geometry ; but what
had truth to do with religion ? The aesthetic cry (never
louder than in our own time) is always. If the legend,
the doctrine, the ceremony, is beautiful, it is none the
worse for being false or teaching falsehood. And with
the divorce of truth from religion went its divorce from
practical life. The " medicinal lie " in Plato is terribly
significant, even if it shews rather contempt of concrete
facts than real disregard of truth. At any rate it shews
how little truth was understood to cover deed and word
as well as thought. So, too, the Greek in his shrinking
from things ugly seldom fairly faced the fact of sin. It
might arise from ignorance or sense or madness ; but sin
as sin was a fact he did not often care to reckon with.
The mysteries and the Eastern worships dealt with it
in their several ways, but divine Philosophy came and
looked on it and passed by on the other side. The
Greek made life a Euxine Sea : if it was too rough, he
called it smooth. It was for want of courage to make
truth cover the whole of life that the splendour of Greek
thought was dimmed by clouds of scepticism, and her
glorious intellect lost itself in arid cleverness. The

GREECE 299

Greek did all that man could do by dint of intellect ;
but the problem of life was not to be solved till the Jew
had brought his thought of holiness, the Eoman his ideal
of law and order, the Teuton his belief in conscience and
the individual : and all these can find no unity but in
the idea developed by the Christians, of a way that
expresses truth, and a truth which expresses life in all
its depth and all its range.

If we have found it convenient to sum up the work
of Greece at this point rather than a later one, we do
not mean that it was completed by Plato and Aristotle.
Greece, like Eome, did much of her best work in the
times men count as her decline. Epicurean and Neo-
platonic and even Stoic thought were mainly Greek, and
there is no break till the closing of the schools by
Justinian. But Greek thought enters on a new period
after Alexander, and is more coloured by foreign
influence. The conquered East reacted on Greece
almost as powerfully as Greece herself on Home two or
three centuries later, bringing to the surface tendencies
of Greek thought which, even if found in Plato, were not
otherwise conspicuous in classical times. Eew of its later
leaders were pure Greeks. Zeno was half a Phosnician,
Philo was a Jew, Plotinus himself was of Eastern origin.
Greece was now no more than a part, and hardly a bright
part, of a world of Hellenistic culture stretching far
beyond Marseille and Antioch. The schools of Athens
were rivalled and often more than rivalled by Alexandria,
Pergamus, Tarsus, Ehodes ; and the distant echoes of
their teaching reached the Indus. Greece had thrown
open her doors to all the nations. Eomans and bar-

300 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

barians were welcome to her culture, and even to the
mysteries of Eleusis. She stood forward as the teacher
of the world, making disciples first of Macedonia, then of
Rome, and at last shaping even Christianity into forms
of her own.

But Greece herself was no longer the Greece of old
time. The civic ideals which shone so brightly for
Solon and Pericles had been tarnished by the demoraliz-
ing struggle of the Peloponnesian War, and no State
proved able to take up the civilizing work of Athens.
Sparta brutally misused her power, and Thebes lost her
one great man at Mantinea. Then came the Macedonian
conquest, which only the divisions of Greece made either
possible or permanent. Civic life seemed to go on as
before, but it ceased to be an ideal when the city had
lost its freedom. Art had no decline, luxury and refine-
ment increased, science and literary criticism flourished,
as at Alexandria ; but the political side of philosophy
had to be dropped. The impulse given by Socrates to
the ethics of the individual now carried all before it.
As his predecessors had begun by leaving out the gods
from their working plans, so now his successors went on
to leave out the State. A few cynics and others had
left it out before ; but now that the old city-states were
subject to great military kingdoms there was nothing
else to be done.

The loss is great and evident. The dethroning of
the State was a fatal blow to the old religion based on it,
and to the old moral training of civic life. The forms
might survive, but their power was withering. For the
next six hundred years the world was using makeshifts

GREECE 801

till it found a new religion. It was easy enough to
manufacture gods, but very little religion encircled
Antigonus or Demetrius, and such loyalty as gathered
round them was Macedonian, not Greek. C?esar stood on
a higher level, as the incarnation of the glory of the
world and Eome, and sometimes commanded real
devotion, though perhaps the men who kept the image
of Marcus among their household gods in Constantine's
time gave their worship to the saint rather than the
emperor. But Cssar-worship never lost a taint of
political expediency, and never became a genuine world-
religion. The mysteries and the Eastern worships made
a real advance in so far as they held out a promise of
life after death, and may in some cases have had a good
moral influence ; but the amount of quackery and
unreason mixed up with them made them impossible as
a permanent religion. So philosophy was forced to
undertake the work of religion as well as its own.
Small blame to it if it proved a poor makeshift. How-
ever clearly it might speak, it lacked authority. The
will of the immortal gods was a commanding motive,
and appealed to common men ; but even the philosopher
could hardly respect in the same way the opinions of his
fellows.

Nor was philosophy any longer a fearless and thorough
search for truth in all its range. Disputers and
parasites dressed out in the philosopher's cloak were
scandal enough ; but there was a deeper evil. The man
of science, whose province is phenomena, is blameless if
he takes his first principles at second-hand, provided he
knows what he is doing: not so the philosopher, who

302 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

has no right to take anything whatever as a first
principle if he can get behind it. But now the
philosophers were content to assume that their first
prmciples of ethics were sufficiently proved by the
average opinion of the nations around them. They
simplified their task, for nothing now remained but to
shew how the individual was to work out these principles
in private life. But they mutilated philosophy. One
part of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle had nothing
to represent it in that of Stoics and Epicureans ; and
unfortunately there was no possibility of thorough work
without the missing part.

Greece as a whole was declining from the time of
Cyrus to the Koman conquest, though the decline is
masked by the dazzling splendour of Athens in the fifth
century. It was very plain after the fall of Athens.
The Peace of Antalcidas was even more shameful to
Greece than Xenophon's retreat had been to Persia ; and
after the Macedonian conquest anyone could see that
Greece was perishing for lack of men. The great armies
of Pausanias and Archidamus were things of the past ;
and even the twenty thousand who repulsed the Gauls
in 280 were half of them Aetolians. Now, a great and
continuous decline of population is always the visible
summing-up of a vast amount of moral or social un-
soundness. There can be neither denial of the fact nor
doubt of its meaning. Not only the State was in danger,
but the very existence of the community was threatened.
With the darkening outlook came a darker view of life.
The word might still be. Let us eat and drink ; but
there was a new tone of sadness in the answer, For to-

GREECE 303

morrow we die. It was as if the cupboard were opened
at the feast to shew the skeleton. As death loomed
larger, life grew poorer. Was it worth so much after
all ? So for the first time asceticism became a serious
factor of Greek thought. There had always been traces
of it, but now it became conspicuous, as in the constant
endeavour of the Stoics to shew that the good and evil
things of life are of no consequence to the wise man —
which they could easily do by stripping them of their
associations and refusing to look at anything more than
their barest elements.

Nevertheless, the change was not pure loss. If the
city-state was fallen, the individual remained ; and if
the great empires were artificial formations, mankind at
any rate must be a natural whole. The Macedonian
and Eoman conquests did for the philosophers what the
Assyrian invasions had done for the prophets, and the
Chaldsean for Israel generally, by forcing them to look
both inside and outside the old fences of national
division, — inward on man as man, and outward for the
first time on mankind as a unity. Something surely
was gained when the teaching of history compelled them
to reconsider the old dualism of spirit and matter, and
the old preferences of speculation to practical life, and of
the city to the citizen. Even if the city-state was the
highest form of society, other forms also might have
their advantages ; and trial could hardly be made of
them till the individuals who constituted it had been
isolated for closer study, and recombined in a larger
whole.

Epicureans and Sceptics will not detain us, for they

304 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

contributed very little directly to the conception of the
knowledge of God. The Epicureans only softened the
crude Hedonism of the Cyrenaics, and continued the old
Greek search for the summum honum in pleasure, while
the function of the Sceptics was purely critical. It is
otherwise with the Stoics. As the Epicureans went
back to the atoms of Leucippus and Democritus, the
Stoics returned to the primal fire of Heraclitus for the
origin on one side of things that run their course and in
the end return to it again, and on the other of those
principles of unity in all things which reach their
highest form in human reason, which is the image of
the divine. True, everything that exists is material ;
but everything material is also spiritual, for spirit and
matter are not two things, but two aspects of one thing.
But if man's true self is a part of the divine, it follows
with the Cynics that such true self is the highest object
of his care ; but it does not follow with the Cynics that
it is best cared for by trampling down everything else.
If the divine of which it is a part be the principle of
order in the universe, it follows that true care of self
consists not in setting at^ defiance the customs of society,
but in following the order of the universe. Indeed, if
self is fulfilled in relations to the universe, the rule of
self and the rule of the universe must coincide. That
which is reason in the individual is reason in other men,
and the principle of order in the universe. Hence we
have on one side the proud self-consciousness of the
Stoic, on the other his wide human sympathy. He has
reached the idea, first that there is a universal law, and
then that the duty of following it is universal. In this

GREECE 305

he contrasts with earlier philosophers, who scarcely
pretended to speak to more than the select few. To
the Stoic duty was as imperative to barbarians as to
Greeks, though only the wise man fully recognized it.
Further, this law was not an external command. It
was expressed in the moral sense of mankind, and truly
echoed in the wise man's heart, so that he found true
freedom in serving it. However the world might go
astray, the wise man was independent, and could always
go his own way. If the struggle was after all too hard
for him, suicide was a ready escape. " The door was
open."

The Stoics had made a discovery when they identified
reason in man with the principle of order in the world ;
and, like most discoverers, they seemed to think that
their discovery explained everything. They reasoned as
if the ideal was the actual, and made no compromises.
They recognized no partial knowledge or partial virtue.
They saw no continuity in character, but treated every
act as an isolated decision. They allowed nothing for
impulse and instinct, but judged every act as the result
of deliberate reflection. Every act of the wise man was
virtue, no act of the natural man. They laid down
their principles, and carried them out without regard
to consequences. Hence the pedantic and impracticable
conscience which was the laughing-stock of the profane.
Like the Puritan, the Stoic stood for seriousness in a
frivolous world ; and like the Puritan, he made himself
ridiculous. Conscience first, said the Stoic; and the
Christian agrees with him. Conscience last, says the
ungodly ; and the ungodly is to this extent right, that
VOL. I. — 20

306 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

the secondary authorities of custom, opinion, etc. are not
lightly to be set at defiance. The only plea the final
court will accept is that justice has miscarried in the
courts below. The Stoics turned trifles into matters
of conscience, and slighted the legitimate authority of
custom.

But hence also the lofty sense of duty which made
Stoicism the worthiest representative of religion in the
asce of Eoman civil wars. It was a mixture of conscience
and republican pedantry which put it in opposition to
the Empire — an opposition which ceased when the
Empire shewed a more legal and constitutional spirit
after Domitian's time. In the second century it was
much more of a republic than is commonly allowed, for
the emperors (except Hadrian in his last illness) were
largely guided by the senate. So Marcus was not very
far out of his place as a Stoic on the throne.

The Stoic's conception of what v:e may call the know-
ledge of God was clear on two points. He recognized
a principle of reason in the universe, and the same
principle of reason in the duty of man. The self-
consistency preached by Zeno was defined by his next
successor, Cleanthes, as consistency with the nature of
things. But having reached this illuminating thought,
he was quite unable to work it out. It had to remain
matter of faith. He presumed that the world is
according to reason, l)ut he entirely failed to shew that
any of the things in the world are according to reason.
Judaism, Christianity, and even Islam all have eschato-
logies which (if true) shew that some of them at least
are according to reason ; but Stoicism is as helpless as

GREECE 307

the old polytheism. If the history of the world returns
in cycles, it can have no such external purpose as is
needed to give a rational meaning to the things of time.
The later Stoics might drop the physical side of the
philosophy, but still there was no ray of light on the
thick darkness of the Whence and Whither. True,
they have a general idea that good fortune, and still
more bad fortune, is material for training ; and this is
a real advance ; but they make it useless by subordinating
it to their general doctrine of the essential indifference
of outward things. We get clearly back to the ground
of ignorance when the self is defined without regard to
the relations of life which constitute its definition. Even
more than the Christian, the Stoic walked by faith and
not by sight. He had the same faith that the things
of the world, the wilfulness of men excepted, are
according to reason ; but he never could render a
reason for his faith — he had no doctrine of a risen
Saviour to give him assurance full and final that so
indeed they are.

The Stoic then began in faith that the divine is
immanent in the world; but he so utterly failed to
make his faith reasonable that we are not surprised to
find the next great movements of thought swinging
round to a purely transcendental God. They w^ere the
same in Greece and Israel ; with Philo in spite of his
Judaism, with Plotinus unreservedly, with the Christians
in spite of the Gospel. Everywhere the degradation of
the State from an ideal to a police was slowly forcing in
on men the belief that the divine must be too great and
distant for us to know it — at least directly, for in one

308 THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

direction the Stoics had struck out a line of thought
which the transcendentalists who followed them found
helpful. The conception of a Logos or immanent reason
in the world was not meant by the Stoics themselves to
be more than an assertion of divine activity. But when
the transcendentalist wave of thought swept over the
world, it was felt that a God so distant and so high
could not be supposed himself to touch the things of
time, but needed a mediator. Such a mediator was
supplied by the Stoic idea of a Logos or immanent
Eeason. But what was this Logos ? Was it divine ?
and if so, in what sense ? Was it personal or impersonal ?
This was the problem of the next age ; and we shall see
that Philosophy broke down before it, and Christianity
itself could find no solution till the purely transcendental
conception of the divine was abandoned at the Council
of Mcaea.

END OF VOL. I.

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